Chapter 18 - The Letter from Zurich
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The Swiss video clip played on a continuous loop on my monitor.
I called Uncle Nate immediately. When he answered, his voice sounded heavy with sleep, but the moment I explained the Swiss vault alert, he was wide awake.
“That’s impossible, Emily,” Nate insisted, his voice trembling over the line. “I was in the room! I saw my sister stop breathing! I signed her medical record!”
“Nate, I’m looking at high-definition security footage from Geneva recorded forty minutes ago,” I replied, my pulse racing. “She opened a vault that required a live vocal biometric print.”
Silence stretched over the phone line for ten agonizing seconds.
“What was inside the vault?” Nate asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“The director didn't say, but the courier is arriving at the ranch via private helicopter in two hours to deliver a sealed package she left behind.”
At two o'clock in the morning, a black Airbus helicopter touched down on the ranch’s private helipad. Two armed security couriers carrying a locked titanium briefcase were escorted directly into my study by my head of security.
They placed the briefcase on my desk, entered a one-time authorization code, and stepped back.
The titanium lid clicked open. Inside sat a thick, yellowed parchment envelope sealed with heavy black wax.
Written across the front in elegant, sweeping calligraphy was my name:
To my daughter, Emily.
With trembling fingers, I broke the wax seal and pulled out a four-page handwritten letter accompanied by a encrypted flash drive.
I unfolded the thick paper, recognizing the graceful cursive script from the photographs.
“My dearest Emily,
May you like
If you are reading this letter, it means Preston has finally been removed from the board, and you have claimed what was rightfully yours. I knew that if I stayed alive in 1998, Preston would never stop hunting us. He would have found a way to kill both of us to secure the trust.
So, with your adoptive mother Clara’s help, we staged my death. The body buried in New York belonged to an unclaimed victim of a tragic house fire. I went into deep hiding in Europe, watching over you from the shadows for twenty-seven long years...”
