CHAPTER 6: Cracks in the Glass
I spent the next forty-eight hours digging into the hidden archives of Laurent Holdings. Using my high-level security clearance, I accessed files that had been archived long before I entered the business world.
What I found made my blood run cold.
In 2004, Richard Laurent was not the sole owner of Laurent Holdings. He had a co-founder: Arthur Vale. Adrian’s father.
Arthur Vale wasn’t a school teacher. He was a brilliant quantitative analyst who had created a revolutionary trading algorithm—the very algorithm that built my father’s empire. But in late 2004, Arthur Vale died in a hit-and-run accident. Weeks later, his widow and young son, Adrian, moved to the suburbs with a modest life insurance payout. Arthur’s name was systematically erased from the company’s history.
I stared at the digitized documents on my monitor.
My father hadn’t just patronized Adrian. He had monitored him. When Adrian and I met at that charity gala four years ago, it wasn't a chance encounter. My father had placed Adrian in my social circle.
I closed the laptop, my hands shaking.
My entire marriage—the love, the domestic life, the painful betrayal—was built on a foundation of deception engineered by the two men I trusted most: my husband, who used me for status, and my father, who used me as a leash to control the son of the man he ruined.
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My phone chimed. It was a message from Adrian.
“Evelyn. I know about Project Aegis. Meet me at the old docks at midnight, or I release the documents to the press. Let’s see how strong the Laurent empire is when the world finds out your father is a murderer.”
