Chapter 5 - Sins of the Father
Adrian stumbled out of the office building, gasping for air.
His phone began to ring incessantly.
It was his father, calling from Paris.
Adrian swiped the screen, his fingers numb.
"Dad?" Adrian rasped.
"What did you do, you idiot?!" his father screamed through the receiver.
"I didn't do anything! She ambushed me!"
"She took everything, Adrian! Everything!"
His father sounded on the verge of a heart attack.
"The family trust, the overseas accounts, the real estate," his father panted.
"How could she take yours?" Adrian asked, entirely bewildered.
"Because the patents," his father whispered, his voice suddenly terrified.
Adrian stopped walking. "What patents?"
"The core software that built Vale Industries... we didn't develop it."
Silence hung heavily in the air.
"We took it from Eleanor Whitmore when her company went bankrupt," his father confessed.
"Claire’s mother."
Adrian felt the world spinning around him.
"Claire found the original paper trail," his father continued, sobbing now.
"She threatened to take it to the FBI if I didn't sign over my voting rights and assets."
Adrian realized then that this had never been about his infidelity.
The affair was just a convenient excuse for Claire to pack her bags.
This was a twenty-year-old vendetta.
This was a daughter avenging her mother’s ruined legacy.
"We have nothing left, Adrian," his father cried.
Adrian hung up the phone and stared blankly at the busy California street.
May you like
The empire he thought he ruled was built on stolen sand.
And the tide had just rushed in.
