Chapter 1 - The Cold Rain and the First Vengeance-1
My father d:ie:d, and before his funeral was even over, my husband took control of 60% of my father's $3 billion company and threw me out of the house, saying, "Without your father, you're nobody." I didn't argue. I called the family lawyer and opened the sealed envelope my father had left behind... then I heard a voice that couldn't possibly still be alive.
PART 1
"Your father has been d:ea:d for less than twenty-four hours, and you've already signed away his company to me. It's a shame you never learned to read before trusting your husband."
Gavin Barrett tossed the folder onto the marble table in our family home in Highland Hills.
I was still dressed in black.
The flowers from my father Ross Albright's funeral still filled the house with that sweet scent that becomes unbearable when grief won't let you breathe.
For three days, Gavin had played the perfect husband. He accepted condolences, embraced the executives of Summit Enterprises, and promised everyone he would protect my father's legacy.
But that night, there wasn't a trace of kindness left in his eyes.
Beside him, my mother-in-law, Celina, had already changed out of mourning clothes. She was wearing a red dress, the pearl necklace I had given her for Christmas, and a smile she made no effort to hide.
"The company is bankrupt," Gavin said. "Your father left billions of dollars in debt. If you don't transfer your sixty percent of the shares, the banks will tear the entire company apart."
I opened the folder. My signature was on the last page.
Then I remembered a night two weeks earlier. I had been running a high fever when Gavin came home carrying what he called "urgent bank paperwork." He held my hand, made me tea, and pointed to where I needed to sign.
They weren't bank documents. They were divorce papers and the complete transfer of my shares.
"You tricked me."
"I simply made a decision for you that you never would have had the courage to make yourself."
I stood up, shaking.
"My father hired you when you were nothing more than an analyst with no connections. He made you an executive, welcomed you into his home, and treated you like a son."
Gavin let out a cold laugh.
"He treated me like a servant. I had to put up with his spoiled daughter for four years to get where I am today. Stupidity can be a d:ea:th sentence too, Naomi."
I s:lappe:d him. Celina lunged at me, grabbed my hair, and s:lamm:ed me into the corner of a table.
Gavin didn't stop her. Instead, he called security.
"Throw her out," he ordered. "No phone, no credit cards, no suitcase. This house doesn't belong to her anymore."
"My father bought this house!"
"Your father is d:ea:d."
Two security guards dragged me across the foyer while Celina shouted that I wasn't even capable of running a kitchen.
Outside, a storm poured over Oakville. They left me barefoot outside the front gate, soaked to the skin and bleeding from a cut on my forehead.
From the balcony, Gavin raised a glass.
"Let's see how long a princess survives without money."
The iron gates closed behind me. I walked through the rain with nowhere to go until one thought struck me harder than the cold.
Gavin had prepared those documents before my father's accident. And if he had planned the theft before my father d:ie:d, maybe he had also planned the d:ea:th itself.
I wiped the bl00d from my lip and looked back one last time at the house they had stolen from me.
"Enjoy tonight," I whispered. "Because you still have no idea who you've just awakened."
The iron gates of the Highland Hills estate slammed shut with a heavy, metallic finality that echoed over the roaring thunder of the Oakville storm. Standing barefoot in the freezing mud, soaked to the skin with rain mixed with the warm blood from the cut on my forehead, I stared up at the illuminated balcony. There stood Gavin Barrett, my husband of four years, holding a glass of amber whiskey and smiling down at me as if I were a stray insect he had just swept off his polished porch. Beside him, his mother, Celina, laughed shrilly, her red dress glowing like a beacon of malice in the dark.
"Let's see how long a princess survives without money!" Gavin’s voice carried over the wind, dripping with arrogant cruelty.
They thought they had won. They believed that by stripping me of my phone, my cards, my shoes, and my home, they had reduced me to nothing. They assumed Naomi Albright—the quiet, sheltered daughter of Summit Enterprises' legendary founder—was a fragile doll who would break under pressure. They had forgotten one vital piece of mathematics: zero multiplied by vengeance becomes an infinite weapon.
I turned away from the house, walking into the torrential downpour. Every step on the sharp gravel bruised my bare feet, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the roaring fire of fury inside my chest. Gavin had gloated about tricking me into signing away my 60% controlling share of a $3 billion empire. He had mocked my father, Ross Albright, who had been buried less than twenty-four hours ago. But worse than the theft of the company was the lingering, terrifying suspicion burning in my mind. Gavin had prepared those fraudulent divorce and share-transfer papers two weeks before my father’s sudden, fatal car crash on the winding cliffs of Eagle’s Point.
If Gavin had engineered the paperwork in advance, he had anticipated my father’s death. Which meant he had likely engineered the crash itself.
Shivering violently, I walked three miles through the storm until I reached the outer edge of Oakville, seeking refuge beneath the concrete overhang of an old, abandoned bus station. My breath came in ragged gasps. My father had always told me that in the world of high finance, compassion was a luxury for the weak, and preparation was the only shield against predators. Before he died, sensing a strange shift in Gavin's corporate ambitions, my father had insisted on creating a fail-safe. He had told me about a sealed, tamper-proof security envelope deposited in a secret downtown vault—a safety deposit box tied not to my signature, but to a rare voice-recognition biometric frequency known only to him and me.
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I needed to reach that vault. But first, I needed a phone, a lawyer, and a ghost.
Drawing deep on the iron willpower my father had beaten into me since childhood, I wiped the blood from my forehead, lifted my chin into the howling wind, and began walking toward the city center. Gavin Barrett thought he had buried the Albright dynasty alongside my father. He was about to learn that some ghosts refuse to stay in the ground.
