Chapter 12: My Father’s Favorite Son
Emergency lights glowed red along the floor.
Preston stood in the doorway holding a gun.
Thomas Vale stood beside him.
His face was bruised from his escape at the hospital.
Detective Ortiz raised her weapon.
“Drop it.”
Preston pressed the gun against Daniel’s head.
“No.”
Daniel froze.
Thomas moved behind us and took Ortiz’s weapon.
Preston looked at me.
“You should’ve stayed quiet.”
“You killed Mark.”
“My father handled Mark.”
The words came too easily.
Too casually.
As though my husband’s life were an accounting problem.
“Why?”
“Because Mark discovered the trust.”
“He was Sophie’s father.”
“He was a nobody.”
I stepped toward him.
The gun shifted toward me.
“Stay back.”
“You framed a child because you were afraid she would inherit what you thought belonged to you.”
Preston smiled.
“I built that company.”
“You inherited an office.”
“I sacrificed everything.”
“No. Everyone else sacrificed everything for you.”
His expression twisted.
“You think Grandfather chose you?”
“He chose conditions.”
“He hated Dad.”
“He protected the company from men like you.”
Preston’s hand tightened around the gun.
“For thirty-eight years, everyone told me Whitmore Capital would be mine.”
“And you believed them.”
“It is mine.”
“It belongs to Sophie.”
The words broke him.
He struck me across the face with the gun.
I fell against a filing cabinet.
Ortiz moved.
Thomas forced her back.
Preston crouched beside me.
“You were always the problem.”
I tasted blood.
“No.”
“You embarrassed Mom.”
“No.”
“You disappointed Dad.”
“No.”
“You married beneath us.”
“No.”
His voice rose.
“You produced a child who took everything from me!”
There it was.
The truth beneath every lie.
Not business.
Not family honor.
Jealousy.
The golden child could not survive discovering that he was not entitled to everything.
A voice came through the room’s speaker system.
“I heard enough.”
Preston froze.
Martin Reyes’s voice continued.
“The building security feed is live.”
Ortiz smiled faintly.
Before entering the archive, police had installed a remote transmitter.
Everything Preston had said had been recorded.
Sirens approached outside.
Thomas panicked.
“You said the police were handled.”
Preston turned toward him.
“They were.”
“Not these police.”
Thomas raised his own gun toward Preston.
“I’m not going down for your family.”
Preston fired first.
The shot struck Thomas in the shoulder.
Ortiz lunged.
Daniel pulled me behind a cabinet.
Two more shots exploded.
Then silence.
When I looked up, Thomas was on the floor.
Preston had vanished through the ventilation corridor.
But he left something behind.
His phone.
On the screen was a live tracking map.
One location blinked red.
An abandoned lake house in Wisconsin.
May you like
Beneath the location was one name.
Cassandra.
