Chapter 8 - The Founder Replacement
Marcus pulled me behind the steel desk.
Agents returned fire toward the hangar roof.
Tiffany dropped beside the elevator, one hand pressed against her upper arm. The bullet had grazed her, tearing fabric and skin.
She was alive.
The shooter escaped across the rear maintenance road before federal vehicles closed the perimeter.
Inside the abandoned rifle position, agents found a Carter Dynamics security badge.
It belonged to Nadia Brooks.
My chief financial officer.
The woman who helped me expose the edited footage.
The woman who began the audit six weeks earlier.
I refused to believe the badge proved she fired the shot.
After everything that night, I also refused to dismiss it.
Tiffany allowed a medic to bandage her arm.
“You said you knew the replacement.”
She looked toward the shattered window.
“Nadia.”
I felt the answer before I understood it.
Thomas met Nadia while she was still in graduate school. He financed her education, arranged her first role at Carter Dynamics, and instructed Reed to place her near me.
She became my most trusted executive.
Unlike Jason, she never demanded public credit.
Unlike Malcolm, she never challenged me openly.
She protected me in every visible conflict.
That made her perfect.
“If I was removed,” I said, “the board would choose her.”
Tiffany nodded.
“Thomas believed employees would accept Nadia because you trusted her.”
“What did Nadia know?”
“Everything except that Thomas planned to replace her too if she failed.”
My father built people the way I built systems.
Redundancies.
Backups.
No single point of trust.
Tiffany explained that she discovered the replacement plan two nights before the party. She accessed Malcolm’s private files and saw Nadia’s name attached to an emergency succession vote.
She began recording conversations for her own protection.
“Why not come to me?”
“Because I thought you would have me arrested before listening.”
“You helped drug me.”
“I know.”
“You filmed my husband pushing me.”
“I know.”
“You smiled.”
Her face tightened.
“I needed them to believe I was enjoying it.”
“There were two hundred witnesses. You could have screamed.”
“I was afraid.”
Fear explained action.
It did not erase it.
Tiffany handed me a small drive.
It contained audio of Malcolm and Nadia discussing the board meeting.
Nadia’s voice was clear.
“If Ava survives the party, the public incident must appear severe enough to justify suspension.”
Malcolm asked, “And Jason?”
“Disposable.”
“Reed?”
“Useful until the annex opens.”
“Thomas?”
A long pause.
Then Nadia said, “Thomas has been dead for nine years.”
Tiffany looked at me.
“That is why someone shot at us. Nadia discovered the man giving orders is not Thomas.”
The biometric votes, videos, and voice messages could all have been produced by another person using preserved data.
Carter Dynamics had created the technology capable of doing it.
My father’s image could be synthetic.
His trust credentials could be replicated.
The plane might have been switched without him surviving.
Someone had used Thomas’s authority because everyone around me still responded to his name.
“Who has access to his biometric archive?” I asked.
Tiffany answered.
“Martin Reed.”
I looked toward my attorney.
He had not traveled to Nevada. He remained in Los Angeles managing the legal response.
Reed held my father’s trust files, voice samples, signatures, and private videos.
He had drafted the prenup.
He knew the annex.
He reported the stolen token.
He was one of the only people capable of creating a convincing Thomas.
Jason had accused my father.
Nadia claimed Thomas was dead.
Tiffany accused Reed.
Each path pointed toward the person speaking.
Marcus called Reed from a secure line.
No answer.
His office security feed showed the rooms empty.
The First Continental vault manager reported Reed entered the bank twenty minutes earlier using valid credentials.
He requested access to the Continuity Trust box.
Without my fingerprint, he could not open it.
Unless he had copied mine.
I remembered the vault visit.
Reed handed me a pen before I touched the scanner.
He held the glass of water I used afterward.
He had every opportunity.
We flew back to Los Angeles.
During the flight, Jason sent one final message from police custody.
REED INTRODUCED ME TO THOMAS AFTER THE FUNERAL.
I asked the detective to record a call.
Jason said Reed brought him to a private house six months after the plane crash. A man sat behind a screen and spoke with Thomas’s voice.
Jason never saw his face.
He accepted the arrangement because Reed transferred money from an account carrying the Carter trust seal.
“Why did you tell me your first date with Ava was accidental?” Reed had asked him.
“Because Thomas wanted her to believe it.”
Jason now suspected there had never been a living Thomas in the room.
Only Reed behind the screen.
When we landed, First Continental entered emergency lockdown.
A silent alarm had activated inside the private vault.
Security cameras showed Reed entering with Nadia.
They opened my trust box.
Then both disappeared through a service door not listed on the bank plans.
The original prenup was gone.
So was the Continuity Annex.
On the floor, Reed left a note in my father’s handwriting.
May you like
AVA, YOU WERE NEVER THE FOUNDER.
Continue to the next part: Reed and Nadia steal the original agreement and claim Ava’s ownership of Carter Dynamics was built on a lie.
