What Her Mother Had Left Behind
Chapter 06 - What Her Mother Had Left Behind
Laura barely slept.
At sunrise, she met Dana in a private conference room at a small law office near the coast. Emma sat beside her, pale and furious.
"I want to ruin him," Emma said.
Laura reached for her daughter's hand.
"We don't ruin people. We find the truth, and we let consequences do the rest."
Dana plugged in Marisol's flash drive.
Most of the folders were copies of legitimate company records. But one directory had been encrypted poorly enough for Dana's forensic consultant to open within an hour.
Inside were scanned estate documents from Laura's mother, Eleanor Bennett.
One caught Dana's attention.
It described a trust holding thirty-one acres of undeveloped waterfront property north of Charleston.
Laura had never seen it.
"This land wasn't listed in the estate inventory," Laura said.
Dana's face tightened. "No. It wasn't."
The property had been purchased decades earlier through a holding entity. After Eleanor died, a transfer should have placed it under Laura's control.
Instead, the ownership path became murky.
Three months earlier, someone had filed preliminary paperwork to sell an option on the land to a development consortium.
The proposed value was eighteen million dollars.
Emma whispered, "Mom..."
Laura could not speak.
Evan had spent almost a year urging her to modernize old company files. He had volunteered to digitize boxes from her mother's storage unit. At the time, Laura had thought it was kindness.
Now she saw opportunity.
Dana leaned back.
"This explains the operating agreement amendment. If he gained transaction authority after the wedding, he could try to move quickly on the property."
"But why the affair?"
"Maybe it was separate. Maybe it wasn't."
Laura hated that answer because it was probably true. Real betrayal rarely came in neat categories.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Evan.
Please don't cancel anything yet. We can fix this. Investors arrive tonight. Think about what your mother would want.
Laura read the final sentence twice.
Then she handed the phone to Dana.
"He knows about the land," she said.
May you like
Dana nodded slowly.
"And now he knows you may know too."
