Lauren and Blake had been shifting company assets into shell corporations for months and had quietly adjusted our partnership agreement to transfer my shares to the surviving partner in case of my death.
Lauren had also persuaded me to increase my life insurance policy six months earlier under the guise of protecting Ava’s future.
As Victor continued digging, another detail surfaced that changed everything.
Blake had been a junior safety inspector at a construction site twenty two years ago where my father, Robert Holloway, died in what authorities ruled an accident involving a falling steel beam.
I had been sixteen when I watched them lower my father’s coffin into the ground, and I never fully believed the story of simple negligence.
Now Ava recalled one more line from the overheard conversation.
“Dad,” she said quietly at breakfast in the hotel, “Uncle Blake said it worked once and it would work again.”
The implication struck me like a physical blow.
Victor traced records connecting Blake’s family to fierce business rivalries with my father decades ago.
My father had outbid a struggling contractor named Harold Ramsey, Blake’s father, causing his company to collapse.