PART 2: THE WOMAN BESIDE ME
Grant’s hand clamped around my wrist hard enough to leave white marks beneath his fingers.
“Let her go,” Daniel ordered.
Grant tightened his grip. “This is between my wife and me.”
“No,” I said, staring directly into his eyes. “This is between a suspended CEO and the woman whose company he tried to steal.”
Two airport security officers hurried toward us. Grant released me before they reached him, but the damage was already done. Every camera in the terminal had captured him grabbing me.
As the officers stepped between us, Grant leaned close enough that only I could hear him.
“You think I’m the one you should fear?” he whispered. “Ask Evelyn why she needed you on that plane.”
For the first time since he entered the terminal, I saw something other than rage on his face.
I saw satisfaction.
Grant wanted me to doubt her.
I refused to give him the pleasure.
“Go back to the hospital,” I said. “Your son has been alive for less than two hours, and you have already abandoned him twice.”
His face twisted. “Olivia—”
The gate closed between us.
I walked onto the jet without looking back, but Grant’s warning followed me all the way down the narrow aisle.
Evelyn sat across from me while Daniel took a seat near the front. The blue folder containing my appointment as interim executive chair rested on the table between us.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“My husband had a child with my CFO, stole millions from my company, forged my signature, and tried to destroy my father’s trust. Fine is the best I can offer right now.”
Evelyn gave me a small, understanding smile. “Your father would be proud of how you handled him.”
Normally, those words would have comforted me.
Instead, I heard Grant’s whisper again.
Ask Evelyn why she needed you on that plane.
The jet lifted through the storm. When the lights of the city disappeared beneath the clouds, Daniel opened his laptop and joined a secure call with Lena Ortiz.
Lena looked exhausted. Her dark hair was pulled into a loose knot, and three monitors glowed behind her.
“We have another problem,” she said.
“How serious?” I asked.
“Eleven-point-four million dollars serious.”
My stomach tightened.
Lena shared her screen. A transfer request had been submitted twelve minutes after the board suspended Grant. The money was scheduled to leave Northstar’s acquisition account and enter an escrow account in Seattle.
“I froze it before it cleared,” Lena explained. “But Grant’s suspension should have made this request impossible.”
“Who authorized it?” Daniel asked.
“The first authorization came from Grant’s executive token. The second came from a trust-level account.”
I leaned closer to the screen. “Mine?”
“No. It belonged to the trust protector.”
Silence filled the cabin.
My father had created the trust protector position to stop anyone—including me—from making a reckless decision with Northstar’s controlling shares. Only one person had ever held that authority.
I slowly turned toward Evelyn.
She did not look surprised.
“My token was copied,” she said calmly.
Lena’s eyes narrowed. “That type of token cannot be copied remotely.”
“Then Grant must have accessed it during a board meeting.”
“When did you last physically possess it?”
Evelyn glanced toward the dark window. “I would need to check.”
Grant lied as naturally as breathing. He planted doubt, isolated people, and turned suspicion into a weapon. I reminded myself of that as Evelyn folded her hands.
Still, she had not answered the question.
Lena opened another document. “There’s more. The escrow account belongs to Orison Advisory.”
I recognized the name from the fake consulting payments.
“Melissa’s brother’s company?” I asked.
“That is what Grant wanted us to believe,” Lena replied. “The registration was amended nine months ago. Melissa’s brother is only the listed manager. The true beneficiary is hidden behind a private holding company.”
“Can you identify the owner?”
“I’m working on it. But the holding company was created two days after your father’s funeral.”
The cabin seemed to grow colder.
Evelyn abruptly stood. “We’re wasting time. If we delay the Seattle acquisition, Northstar could face a penalty large enough to trigger layoffs.”
“My father’s company can survive a delayed acquisition,” I said. “It may not survive another stolen eleven million dollars.”
Her eyes hardened for half a second before the warmth returned.
“Of course,” she said. “I only meant that we must be careful.”
She walked toward the rear cabin.
The moment the door closed behind her, Daniel lowered his voice.
“Your father appointed Evelyn because he trusted her more than anyone.”
“Did he ever try to replace her?”
Daniel hesitated.
That hesitation frightened me more than a direct answer.
“Three days before his death,” Daniel said, “your father requested documents to remove the trust protector.”
I stared at him. “Why didn’t I know?”
“He canceled the meeting before signing them.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. But Evelyn was the last person from Northstar to see him alive.”
My father had died from a sudden heart attack in his study. Evelyn said they had spent that evening reviewing quarterly reports. I remembered her standing beside me at the funeral, holding my hand while Grant greeted the directors.
Back then, I had believed I was surrounded by people protecting my father’s legacy.
Now I wondered how many had been waiting to divide it.
We landed in Seattle just after midnight. Rain struck the runway in silver sheets. Two black vehicles waited to take us to Cascade Biomedical, the company Grant had been trying to acquire.
Reporters had already gathered outside the building.
Grant had acted quickly.
As I stepped from the vehicle, questions exploded around me.
“Mrs. Hale, did you remove your husband while his child was being born?”
“Is this retaliation for his affair?”
“Did you know about the missing company funds?”
“Are you mentally capable of leading Northstar?”
That last question stopped me.
A reporter held up a printed statement bearing the letterhead of Grant’s attorney. It claimed I had suffered an “emotional breakdown” after years of unsuccessful fertility treatment and had used my shares to punish my husband for having a child.
Grant had taken the most private pain of my life and turned it into a public defense.
Evelyn touched my elbow. “Do not respond.”
I stepped toward the cameras anyway.
“My medical history did not move $2.8 million into fraudulent accounts,” I said. “My infertility did not forge corporate documents. And my husband becoming a father does not excuse him from becoming a thief.”
The questions stopped for one perfect second.
Then Daniel guided me inside.
On the thirty-second floor, Cascade’s founder, Martin Voss, was waiting in a glass conference room. He looked from me to Evelyn with obvious confusion.
“Where is Grant?” he asked.
“Suspended,” I replied. “This acquisition will not proceed until every agreement has been reviewed.”
Martin’s face drained of color. “But your approval is already final.”
“I never approved it.”
He unlocked a cabinet and removed a thick contract. A yellow tab marked the final page.
My signature appeared above my printed name.
Beneath it was the embossed seal of my family trust.
Daniel examined the page. “This seal is authentic.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “The original seal is stored in my father’s private vault.”
Evelyn placed the blue folder on the table. “Olivia, perhaps you signed an early authorization and forgot.”
“I do not forget signing away eighty-six million dollars.”
Martin turned to his computer. “Grant sent us a recording of the signing.”
The conference room screen flickered to life.
A video showed my father’s study. I appeared to be sitting at his desk with the contract in front of me. The woman in the recording had my face, my voice, and even the small scar above my left eyebrow.
She looked directly at the camera and said, “I, Olivia Hale, authorize Northstar Medical Systems to proceed with the Cascade acquisition.”
The video was dated six weeks earlier.
Six weeks earlier, I had been in Paris attending a medical foundation conference.
“It’s fabricated,” I said.
Daniel moved closer to the screen. “It’s more than fabricated. Whoever created this had access to archived security footage from your father’s house.”
Only three people had ever received full access to that system: Grant, me, and Evelyn.
My phone vibrated.
Lena had sent a single message.
I FOUND THE OWNER OF ORISON ADVISORY. DO NOT LET EVELYN SEE THIS.
I opened the attached document beneath the table.
Orison Advisory’s true owner was not Melissa’s brother.
It was Evelyn Shaw.
I raised my eyes.
Evelyn was no longer standing beside me.
The blue folder was gone too.
Daniel rushed into the hallway. The elevator display showed a car descending toward the underground parking level.
“We need security downstairs,” he shouted into his phone.
Then my phone rang from an unknown number.
I answered and heard Melissa sobbing.
“Olivia, please don’t hang up.”
“You have ten seconds.”
“Grant lied to both of us,” she whispered. “He told me the money was his. He told me you were signing everything.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“Because someone came into my hospital room after Grant left. She said if I talked, she would take my baby.”
“Who?”
Before Melissa could answer, a woman’s voice sounded in the background.
“Put down the phone.”
Melissa screamed.
The call ended.
At that exact moment, Lena sent me a security image from the hospital.
It showed Evelyn entering Melissa’s room less than twenty minutes earlier.
I looked toward the elevator display.
That was impossible.
Evelyn had been sitting beside me on the jet when the image was taken.
Then the conference room door slowly opened behind us.
A woman stepped inside wearing Evelyn’s cream suit.
She removed her silver wig, placed the blue folder on the table, and smiled at me.
“You really are your father’s daughter,” she said.
I backed away. “Who are you?”
Her smile widened.
“The woman your father paid to disappear.”
Then she slid a photograph across the table.
It showed my father standing beside Evelyn and the stranger.
Written across the bottom in my father’s handwriting were six words that made my blood run cold:
ONE OF THESE WOMEN WILL KILL ME…
