Chapter 3 - Fifteen Witnesses
Nobody spoke.
The basement door remained locked.
Then came a knock.
Three times.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Sabrina looked at Irving.
“Who did you invite?”
“I invited who you told me.”
Interesting.
Sabrina had organized the guests.
But she apparently didn’t know who was outside either.
Peter looked terrified.
“Don’t open it.”
Irving snapped:
“Why?”
Peter didn’t answer.
I looked at Wyatt.
His eyes were becoming unfocused.
Whatever they had given him was still working through his system.
We needed time.
So I gave everyone something else to fear.
“My recording uploaded automatically.”
Sabrina stared at me.
“You’re lying.”
“Try deleting it again.”
She grabbed my phone.
No service.
The basement signal had vanished.
Someone had activated a jammer.
Not Sabrina.
Her expression proved it.
A second knock came.
Then the lock opened.
A woman entered.
Mid-fifties.
Silver-blonde hair.
Dark red evening gown.
Champagne glass in one hand.
I knew her.
Margaret Shaw.
Chairwoman of North Meridian Holdings.
The shell corporation trying to acquire Wyatt’s companies.
She smiled at me.
“Abraham.”
Sabrina went pale.
“You said you weren’t coming downstairs.”
Margaret ignored her.
There it was.
The hierarchy.
Sabrina answered to Margaret.
Margaret looked at Wyatt.
“Still refusing?”
“Yes,” Irving said.
“Then you’ve handled this badly.”
Sabrina’s face tightened.
“You told us pressure would work.”
“I told you intelligence would work.”
Margaret looked toward Peter.
“And apparently hiring Peter was neither.”
Peter lowered his eyes.
I watched them.
Margaret knew Heartland.
Peter knew Heartland.
North Meridian wanted Wyatt’s companies.
But Wyatt didn’t own Heartland.
He owned three regional logistics businesses he had built independently because I refused to hand him an empire.
Why would anyone torture him for companies worth a fraction of mine?
Unless his companies weren’t the real target.
“What do you actually want?” I asked.
Margaret smiled.
“You.”
Finally.
Wyatt looked at me.
“Dad?”
Margaret set down her champagne.
“The power of attorney wasn’t designed for Wyatt’s companies.”
Sabrina turned sharply.
“What?”
That surprised her too.
Margaret continued.
“It was designed to establish incapacity, transfer management authority, and trigger certain family trust provisions.”
My blood went cold.
There were provisions inside the Yates Family Trust that almost nobody knew.
If Wyatt became incapacitated while I was legally unavailable—
control shifted temporarily to a designated trustee.
Evelyn and I had written that clause thirty years earlier.
But the designated trustee had died.
My younger brother.
Samuel.
Margaret smiled as though reading my thoughts.
“You should have updated your paperwork.”
Then she removed an old document from her purse.
At the bottom was Samuel Yates’s signature.
Except Samuel had been dead for nineteen years.
Margaret turned it around.
A recent notarization had been attached.
I stared at it.
Impossible.
Then Wyatt whispered:
“Dad…”
“What?”
“They kept asking about Uncle Samuel.”
My pulse slowed.
Margaret’s smile widened.
Upstairs, the fifteen party guests began moving toward the basement.
Not leaving.
Coming down.
One by one, they appeared behind Margaret.
Lawyers.
Bankers.
Corporate officers.
People I recognized.
Not Sabrina’s friends.
Heartland shareholders.
And standing at the back was a gray-haired man I had buried nineteen years earlier.
May you like
My brother Samuel.
Alive.
