Chapter 11 - My Father’s Second Death
I had imagined my father alive a thousand times as a child.
Never like this.
Not calm.
Not watching a kidnapped man from a dark room.
Not calling me by name as though we had spoken yesterday.
“Where are you?”
Richard Vance ignored me.
“Your mother looks well.”
Helen stepped toward the screen.
“You stay away from her.”
My father laughed softly.
“She still thinks she protected you.”
Mom’s face changed.
I looked between them.
“What does that mean?”
Richard finally explained Northstar.
Not completely.
Men like my father never gave away the whole board.
He had discovered that several Vance executives planned to remove him after learning he was secretly liquidating company assets.
He claimed the money was intended to protect me.
Helen interrupted.
“He was stealing.”
Richard smiled.
“I was relocating what I built.”
“You were bankrupting thousands of employees.”
There it was.
The heroic dead father of my childhood cracked open.
Northstar had not been created only to save Vance Group.
It was my father’s escape route.
When the board discovered his scheme, he staged his death and vanished with hundreds of millions.
The body on the boat belonged to his financial lieutenant.
“You murdered him?” I whispered.
Richard did not answer.
That was answer enough.
For twenty-two years, he had lived under another identity while waiting for the voting shares to transfer to me.
“Why now?”
“Because you’re finally useful.”
Mom made a sound like she had been struck.
Richard wanted me to take control of Vance Group, purge the legacy board, then approve a merger involving companies secretly controlled by Northstar.
He would return legally wealthy.
Untouchable.
A dead man resurrected as an investor.
“And if I refuse?”
Victor placed a hand on Daniel’s shoulder.
I understood.
Marcus stepped toward the laptop.
“You said Noah was never part of this.”
Richard looked amused.
“Marcus, you really are exactly as insecure as Victor said.”
Marcus went rigid.
My father had studied him.
Fed his resentment.
Used his pride.
And Marcus had walked willingly into the trap.
But then Richard said something that made Mom grip the table.
“You should have told Claire the truth about the boy, Helen.”
“What boy?”
Silence.
Richard’s smile disappeared.
Mom whispered, “Don’t.”
I turned to her.
“What boy?”
My father leaned closer to the camera.
“Marcus thinks Noah is the reason Northstar came back.”
He shook his head.
“Noah is irrelevant.”
Then he looked directly at me.
“Ask your mother about the son she had before you.”
The video ended.
And for the first time that night, Marcus and I reacted exactly the same way.
We both looked at Victor’s empty access log.
May you like
Because Victor Sloane was thirty-nine years old.
Six years older than me.
