Chapter 6 - The Man Who Funded My Beginning
The board meeting ended under federal supervision.
No vote could continue while a director, trustee, and witness were potentially connected to a kidnapping.
Malcolm was detained for questioning but released after claiming the livestream had been sent to him as well. His attorneys argued that his recorded statement about the pool cover referred to a planned party effect, not a murder attempt.
Words remained flexible when money paid enough people to repeat the preferred meaning.
Tiffany’s video had no location data.
Behind her was a concrete wall, a green industrial light, and the faint sound of aircraft.
Nevada.
My father kept an aircraft hangar outside Reno before his death.
I had not visited it since the crash.
Reed wanted federal agents to handle the search.
I asked him again why my father created a trust he could still control after death.
He looked exhausted.
“Thomas believed founders become dangerous when no one can remove them.”
“So he gave himself permanent control.”
“He gave the trust control.”
“Through his biometric identity.”
Reed admitted the Continuity Trust had been designed before Carter Dynamics became public. My father feared investors, spouses, or even I might compromise the company.
Thomas retained a sealed trustee credential.
After the crash, Reed attempted to deactivate it.
The system rejected the request because the trust had received periodic proof of life.
“Who provided it?”
“Encrypted biometric packets arrived every ninety days.”
“And you never told me?”
“I hired investigators. Every path ended at shell clinics in Nevada.”
“You still let the trust vote.”
“I had no authority to suspend it.”
I looked at the man who had helped me negotiate billion dollar deals.
“You had authority to tell me my father might be alive.”
He did not defend himself.
That hurt more.
The Nevada hangar had been purchased by Laurent Aviation twelve years earlier.
Charles Laurent’s company.
Tiffany’s father and mine had shared more than a boardroom.
They owned aircraft together.
My father’s fatal flight departed from that hangar. Charles died two years before the crash, but company records showed his aviation trust remained active.
Marcus found a passenger manifest hidden inside archived insurance files.
Thomas Carter was listed as pilot.
A second passenger used the initials C.L.
Charles Laurent.
Both men presumed dead had boarded the aircraft.
Only one unidentified body was recovered.
The crash may have killed neither of them.
I remembered my father’s funeral.
Malcolm stood beside me in the cemetery.
Reed handled the estate.
Jason, then only a man I had been dating for four months, held my hand while I cried.
Every major man in my adult life had been present around a coffin nobody opened.
“Did Jason know my father?” I asked Reed.
“Thomas met him once before the crash.”
“Jason told me they never met.”
“Your father asked me to investigate him.”
The report remained inside Reed’s private archive.
Jason had gambling debt, two failed businesses, and a history of dating women connected to wealthy families. Thomas considered him a threat.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He intended to.”
The plane crashed three days later.
Jason proposed within six months.
Reed drafted the prenup because my father’s trust required it.
Jason signed reluctantly, believing the copy stored in our home was the only executed version.
If Thomas survived, he had watched me marry a man he distrusted.
He had waited years to intervene.
That was not protection.
It was observation.
Marcus traced the green light in Tiffany’s video to an emergency fixture used in older Laurent hangars.
Federal agents prepared a search.
I insisted on going to Nevada.
Reed objected.
“You are a target.”
“I have been a target inside my own home.”
At the airport, Jason called from an unknown number.
“I know where Tiffany is.”
“Then tell the police.”
“They will reach an empty hangar.”
“What do you want?”
“To come with you.”
I almost laughed.
“You tried to drown me.”
“I pushed you. I did not activate the cover.”
“You drugged my champagne.”
“Malcolm gave Tiffany the drops.”
“You handed her the glass.”
His breathing changed.
“I thought the plan was to make you look unstable. I did not know the cover would close.”
The distinction mattered legally.
Not morally.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because your father recruited me.”
The airport noise disappeared around me.
Jason claimed Thomas contacted him after our first date. He offered to erase Jason’s debts if he stayed close to me, reported major decisions, and ensured I signed the Continuity Trust amendments after marriage.
“You married me for him.”
“At first, I stayed because of the arrangement.”
“And later?”
“I told myself it became real.”
Every betrayer eventually reached for love as a partial excuse.
Jason said Thomas stopped contacting him two years ago. Malcolm took over. He promised Jason control of Carter Dynamics if he created enough evidence to remove me.
“What changed two years ago?”
“You rejected the defense acquisition.”
I had refused to sell our identity verification technology to a military contractor after learning it could be used for domestic surveillance.
My father had supported the contract through the trust.
When I resisted, the plan shifted from monitoring me to replacing me.
Jason gave me the hangar security code.
Then he said, “Ava, Thomas did not choose Tiffany because of her father.”
“Why did he choose her?”
May you like
“Because she is not Charles Laurent’s daughter.”
Continue to the next part: Jason claims Tiffany’s identity was created to hide the true Laurent heir and that Ava’s father selected her for a different reason.
