Without another word, she slid a thick folder across the polished table.
“Sign these restructuring documents,” she ordered. “Marcus and I will permanently oversee company operations from now on.”
Marcus leaned closer and smiled with practiced sympathy.
“You’ve carried this burden long enough, Samuel. Tragedy changes people, and difficult decisions are better left to those who can still make them objectively.”
I slowly picked up the expensive fountain pen lying beside the folder and turned it between my fingers.
“Perhaps you’re right.”
My mother’s smile widened immediately because she believed I had finally accepted complete defeat. She watched me open the folder with the confidence of someone convinced the last obstacle standing between her and absolute control had finally disappeared.
At that exact moment, my secured phone vibrated quietly inside my jacket pocket.
I didn’t look at the screen because I already knew what the signal meant. Investigator Mara Chen would only interrupt the meeting if she had confirmation strong enough to support immediate arrests. While my mother watched me prepare to sign, federal agents were already searching the isolated farmhouse Catherine described earlier that afternoon.
Within minutes they found everything.
The investigators recovered restraints bolted to the floor, medical sedatives, forged identification documents, and personal belongings Catherine had described in remarkable detail. The caretaker surrendered almost immediately and confessed that my mother and Marcus paid him to keep Catherine hidden from the outside world.
My mother tapped impatiently on the signature line.
“Samuel, stop wasting everyone’s time.”
I looked up from the papers and asked a question neither she nor Marcus expected.
“What happened to Catherine’s wedding ring?”
The smile disappeared from my mother’s face for only a fraction of a second before she regained her composure.
Marcus answered almost instantly.
“It burned with the body.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s interesting.”
Neither of them spoke.
“The official police inventory from the vehicle fire specifically states that no jewelry was recovered from the scene.”
The conversation around the table stopped almost immediately. Several directors looked from Marcus to my mother, waiting for someone to explain the contradiction. My mother forced out a brittle laugh before lifting her wineglass.
“Must we revisit such painful memories tonight? We’re here to discuss the future of this company.”
I lowered my eyes again and signed every document she had placed before me.
However, I signed them using a slight variation my late father secretly taught me when I first joined the company. Under the Kincaid family trust, that small alteration legally identified any signature obtained under coercion. My mother had forgotten the provision years earlier because she never imagined I still remembered it.
The moment I finished signing, she snatched the papers from the table and held them up triumphantly.
“You see?” she told the directors. “Samuel always comes to his senses eventually.”
Before anyone could respond, a waiter quietly approached my chair and handed me a sealed envelope.
“Someone asked me to deliver this to you personally, sir.”
I thanked him and slowly opened it.
Inside were several photographs taken only hours earlier inside the farmhouse where Catherine had been imprisoned. Beneath them lay a certified copy of a bank transfer showing a large payment from Daria Kincaid to Dr. Weston three days before Catherine disappeared.
Marcus saw the first photograph before anyone else.
His face immediately lost all color.
My mother noticed his reaction and frowned.
“What is in that envelope?”
I calmly closed it again.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
Before she could ask another question, the massive ballroom doors opened.
Every conversation stopped as Dr. Weston walked inside between two federal detectives, his expensive coat soaked from the rain and his hands trembling uncontrollably. My mother rose so suddenly that her chair crashed onto the polished floor behind her.
“That man has no business being here,” she shouted.
Dr. Weston looked directly at her.
“You promised I would never face this alone, Daria.”
Every director in the ballroom turned toward them.
My mother pointed at him with a trembling hand.
“I have never met that man.”
Dr. Weston laughed bitterly.
“You paid me to identify another woman’s remains as Catherine’s. You told me Samuel would inherit everything first, and then you would control him.”