Chapter 5 - THE SHADOW INVESTOR
The secure conference room at Julian’s downtown office was lined with floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the harbor. Outside, drizzle streaked the panes; inside, Naomi had spread out thirty different printouts across the mahogany table.
"Cassidy’s bank accounts were already overdrawn by thirty thousand dollars," Naomi said, tapping a red marker against a ledger statement. "Her lifestyle was a total facade. The designer clothes? Rented. The luxury lease on her BMW? Three months in default. Lydia had drained her own retirement to keep up appearances after your father passed away five years ago."
I pulled off my glasses and rubbed the bridge of my nose, careful to avoid the tender skin beneath my bandage. "Then where did she get ten thousand dollars in cash to purchase the industrial-grade acid from that chemical supplier in Newark?"
Julian walked over, holding an unsealed manila folder bearing the insignia of a private forensics firm. "That’s what Detective Reyes and my investigators have spent the last twelve hours tracing. The Newark supplier was paid in cryptocurrency through a digital wallet created three days before the assault."
"Can crypto be traced?" I asked.
"Normally it takes weeks," Julian explained, pulling out a flow chart. "Except whoever set up the wallet was arrogant. They funded it directly from an offshore checking account registered in the Cayman Islands under a shell corporation called Red Oak Holdings."
My blood ran cold. "Red Oak Holdings? That’s the commercial development syndicate that tried to buy grandfather’s acreage last winter."
"Exactly," Naomi said, leaning across the table with furious intensity. "Grandfather refused their eight-million-dollar offer because they wanted to bulldoze the old-growth forest and build luxury condominiums and a strip mall. When he died, he left the entire property to you in a binding family trust—specifically barring Cassidy and Lydia from selling it without your unanimous consent."
The puzzle pieces snapped together with horrifying clarity. Cassidy hadn't acted out of petty sisterly spite alone. The acid wasn't just a blind fit of rage; it was a targeted hit funded by corporate developers who needed me out of the way.
"If I had been permanently disfigured, blinded, or institutionalized by the trauma," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper, "Lydia would have filed for conservatorship over my medical and legal affairs. She would have taken control of the trust."
"And signed the deed over to Red Oak Holdings within forty-eight hours," Julian finished coldly. "They would have pocketed a two-million-dollar kickback, and you would have spent the rest of your life locked in a private care facility with your face melted off."
I stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the polished floor. The lingering burning sensation in my cheek flared, but it was no longer pain—it was pure adrenaline.
"Who runs Red Oak Holdings?" I demanded.
Julian opened the second page of the dossier. Attached to it was a photograph of a man in his late forties, wearing a tailored Italian suit and stepping out of a silver Maybach outside a Manhattan skyscraper.
"Julian... that's Richard Sterling," I gasped. "He was my father’s college roommate. He gave the eulogy at my father's funeral."
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"And according to phone records," Julian said quietly, "he exchanged eleven encrypted text messages with Lydia Voss on the morning of the dinner party."
***