Chapter 3 - The Voice from the Grave-3
The scratchy, familiar baritone of my father filled the small, sterile room, echoing off the concrete walls with startling clarity.
"Naomi, if you are hearing this recording, it means the trap has sprung, and Gavin believes he has successfully inherited an empire built on my bones."
Mr. Henderson gasped, clutching his chest as he stared wide-eyed at the small tape player resting on the mahogany table. "Good God... that's Mr. Albright's voice. But... how? He passed away in the crash!"
"Listen closely, my daughter," the recorded voice continued, sounding steady and resolute, defying the very concept of mortality. "Gavin thinks he is brilliant, but he is merely a pawn playing a grand master's game. Three months ago, when I discovered his clandestine meetings with rival corporate raiders and his plot to sabotage my vehicle, I didn't alert the police. I set a trap. Every fraudulent document he forced you to sign, every digital transfer he initiated, and every offshore shell company he opened has been meticulously mirrored and logged by our corporate intelligence division under an impenetrable dead-man's switch."
I leaned forward, hanging on every single syllable. My father’s tactical brilliance, often criticized by his board as excessive paranoia, was now our ultimate salvation.
"The sixty percent shares he forced you to sign away under duress?" the tape hissed on. "They are legally void under Section 14 of the corporate charter regarding coercion and incapacitation due to medical fever. Furthermore, the flash drive in this envelope contains undeniable audio and digital proof of Gavin’s conspiracy to commit corporate espionage, embezzlement, and premeditated homicide. Take that flash drive to Marcus Vance, our senior legal counsel at Vance & Associates. He answers only to the Albright name, not the board, and certainly not to Gavin."
The tape clicked as it reached the end of the recording, rewinding slightly before going silent.
The room remained dead quiet save for the hum of the vault's air conditioning unit. Henderson looked at me with a mixture of awe and absolute dread. "Miss Albright... your father anticipated all of this. He knew before it even happened."
"My father was a visionary, Mr. Henderson," I said, my voice steady, stripped of all the grief and trauma that had weighed me down just hours before. I picked up the flash drive and slipped it securely into the hidden inner pocket of my black mourning coat. "And Gavin is about to discover what happens when you wake a sleeping dragon."
I stood up, the wool blanket slipping from my shoulders to pool on the floor. I was no longer the barefoot, bleeding outcast shivering in the rain. I was Ross Albright’s daughter, the rightful heir to Summit Enterprises, and I was stepping back onto the battlefield.
"Do you have a secure phone I can use?" I asked Henderson.
The elderly manager nodded briskly, unlocking his desk drawer and sliding a burner smartphone across the wood. "Encrypted line, direct to any number you dial, Miss Albright. Who are you calling first?"
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I dialed a ten-digit number from memory—a number I hadn't used in four years, belonging to the most feared corporate litigator in the tristate area.
"Marcus Vance," I whispered into the receiver as it began to ring. "It's time to collect our inheritance."
