Chapter 12 - The Shift in Legacy
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The words hit Marcus like a physical blow to the chest. He staggered backward half a step, his arrogant posture completely crumbling.
"Changed his will?" Marcus repeated, the words sounding foreign and impossible on his tongue. He looked wildly between Samuel and me. "What do you mean he changed his will? We’ve had the same estate plan in place for a decade! I get the business, I get the liquid assets, and Elena gets a small trust fund. That was the deal!"
"Your father was profoundly heartbroken by your actions, Marcus," Samuel explained, his voice gentle but completely unyielding. "When Elena presented him with the undeniable forensic proof of your massive theft, he realized that leaving his legacy in your hands would completely destroy everything he had spent his entire life building."
Marcus stared at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of absolute terror and unadulterated hatred.
"He left it to her, didn't he?" Marcus sneered, pointing an accusing finger at me. "You manipulated a dying, medicated old man into cutting his own son out of the will so you could steal the entire fortune for yourself! You’re the real thief here, Elena!"
"Not exactly," I replied calmly.
I reached into my pocket and retrieved the small, encrypted silver flash drive I had taken from the safe. I walked around the massive mahogany desk and plugged the drive directly into the USB port of my father’s large desktop computer. I typed in the decryption password I had memorized months ago and opened the only video file stored on the drive.
"You want to know exactly what Dad did with his money, Marcus?" I asked, turning the large computer monitor so it faced the center of the room. "Why don't you listen to him explain it to you himself."
I pressed the spacebar to play the video.
The screen flickered to life. The room collectively gasped.
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There was my father. He was sitting right here in this very study, in the same leather chair I was currently standing behind. He looked incredibly thin, his skin pale and his hair thinned from the brutal chemotherapy treatments, but his dark eyes were piercing, alert, and fiercely intelligent.
"Marcus," my father’s recorded voice began, tired but remarkably strong. "If you are watching this video, it means that you chose absolute greed over the very last chance I gave you to make things right."
