Chapter 7 - The Father's Voice
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With the audio file safely in the hands of my legal team, I opened my contacts list. I bypassed the numbers of the bridesmaids who had frozen in fear and the wedding planner who was likely having a nervous breakdown. Instead, I called the one person Adrian believed was merely my generous but distant employer.
My father answered on the very first ring, his voice sharp with anxiety.
"Elena. I'm so sorry," Julian Ward said, his voice breaking over the line. I could hear the background noise of his own car speeding away from the cathedral. "I should have stopped it. I should have come up there."
"Don’t be sorry, Dad," I replied, my voice remarkably calm as I watched the city skyline blur past the rain-streaked window. "You were right about him from the very beginning."
Three years earlier, billionaire hotel founder Julian Ward had finally tracked down the daughter he had lost through a web of falsified adoption records. When he found me, I didn't want a public coronation or an instant, unearned title. I had asked him to keep our biological relationship a strict secret while I learned the massive Halcyon Hotel empire from the ground up, starting in the housekeeping department.
Adrian thought he had done his research. He knew I owned twelve percent of Halcyon, a supposed gift from a grateful employer. He thought I was an easy target, a naive foster girl holding a golden ticket. He did not know that the twelve percent was merely a smokescreen. He did not know I legally controlled fifty-one percent of the multi-billion-dollar global corporation.
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I looked back through the rear window, watching the grand cathedral shrink into the distance.
"Freeze every single asset transfer he ever requested," I commanded, the authority settling naturally into my bones. "And call the board of directors."
