Chapter 11 - The Shadow Heir
*Julian,*
*If you are reading this, it means my son Conrad failed to break you, and you have reclaimed what is rightfully yours. You have the mind of a builder, Julian. You are the only one worthy of carrying my legacy.*
*But there is a truth I could never bring myself to tell you while I drew breath. A truth that Conrad discovered three years ago, which drove him into the final madness of his greed.*
*You were never Conrad’s son.*
My breath caught in my throat. The paper rattled in my fingers.
*Thirty years ago, Conrad’s marriage to Eleanor was a hollow sham built on prestige. Eleanor sought affection elsewhere—in the arms of a man named Marcus Vance, Alan Vance’s younger brother. When you were born, Conrad knew the truth, but his pride could not endure the scandal of a divorce. He raised you with contempt because every time he looked at your face, he saw his own humiliation.*
*I protected you because you were an innocent child, and because Marcus Vance died before you took your first breath.*
*However, there is another.*
I stared at the page, my heart suddenly pounding against my ribs like a war drum.
*Conrad had another son. A child born out of wedlock in 1994 to a woman in Chicago—a boy named Thomas. Conrad abandoned them both to protect his inheritance from me. But Thomas grew up knowing exactly who his father was. He grew up angry, brilliant, and utterly ruthless.*
*A year before I died, Thomas found me. He did not want my love. He wanted the company. He wanted the patents. He wanted the Tolland name.*
*I cut Thomas out of the trust completely. I locked the eight million dollars behind your name alone, Julian, because I knew Thomas shared his father's poison.*
*Beware of him, Julian. If Conrad is dead or imprisoned, Thomas has nothing left to lose. He has spent the last three years watching from the dark. He knows who holds the money.*
*And he will come to take it.*
I dropped the letter onto my lap with shaking hands.
I reached into the tin and pulled out the faded photograph.
It showed a young boy, maybe ten years old, with dark hair, piercing slate-gray eyes, and a sharp, cruel set to his jaw.
My blood turned to ice.
I knew that face.
It wasn't an unknown stranger in Chicago.
It was the face of Detective Marcus Vance—the special crimes investigator from the Attorney General’s office who had stood beside me in the vault. The man who had helped me access the thumb drive. The man who had tracked Eleanor’s flight.
The man who had access to every bank account, every cipher, and the location of every asset I had just inherited.
My phone in my coat pocket chimed with a text message.
My hands trembled violently as I pulled the screen up.
It was from an untraceable digital number:
*“Thanks for unlocking Grandpa’s trust for me, little brother. Check your accounts. And tell Maya I like the new apartment. The balcony view is breathtaking.”*
I gasped, looking wildly around the empty cemetery.
May you like
The trees swayed in the freezing wind.
Fifty yards away, at the edge of the tree line, a dark sedan with tinted windows was idling quietly in the fog. Its headlights suddenly flicked on, blinding me in two harsh beams of white light.
