Chapter 10 - The Unwanted Alliance
Andrew moved before Elias fired.
He threw himself against Brenda.
The bullet struck the metal chair beside Daniel.
Brenda screamed and dropped the gun.
Andrew pulled her behind a machine.
Elias fired again.
Mariana watched through the hidden camera.
“Move in,” she ordered.
Escalante security entered the factory from three directions.
Elias disappeared through a service door seconds before they reached the main floor.
Daniel was freed.
Brenda sat against the wall, shaking.
Andrew stood nearby with blood running from a cut above his eye.
Mariana arrived twenty minutes later.
She approached Brenda first.
“Who hired you?”
Brenda stared at the floor.
“Elias.”
“That is not his real name.”
“I do not know his real name.”
“Why did you plant the necklace?”
“He said Andrew would divorce you.”
“And then?”
“He promised Andrew would become chief executive of the combined companies.”
Andrew looked at her.
“You believed that?”
“I believed you wanted her gone.”
Andrew could not deny it.
Mariana continued.
“Why did Elias want me out of the mansion?”
“He needed access to your purse.”
“My purse?”
“He said there was a biometric key hidden inside it.”
Mariana remembered the initials beneath the inner pocket.
The purse had been a gift from her mother.
She had never taken it apart.
A security officer retrieved it from headquarters.
Inside the lining, technicians discovered a thin biometric strip.
It contained Mariana’s fingerprints from the day she turned eighteen.
That explained the perfect signatures.
Elias had copied her biometric authorization.
But someone inside the mansion had helped him reach the purse.
Mariana looked at Brenda.
“Who gave him access?”
Brenda glanced at Margaret.
Andrew noticed.
“My mother?”
Brenda said nothing.
Daniel coughed from the chair.
“It was not Margaret.”
Everyone turned toward him.
Daniel rubbed his wrists.
“I saw Elias enter the mansion archive three months ago.”
“Why did you not report it?” Andrew asked.
“Because he showed me proof that Richard Whitmore was my father.”
Andrew stared at him.
Daniel continued.
“My mother worked for Richard.”
“He paid her to disappear after I was born.”
“You are my brother?”
“Half brother.”
Andrew stepped back.
Daniel looked toward Mariana.
“Richard created the hidden ownership certificates.”
“Before he died, he divided them between his children.”
“I received one.”
“Andrew received the other without knowing it.”
Andrew shook his head.
“I have never seen any certificate.”
“It is hidden inside the Whitmore company seal.”
Mariana remembered the large gold seal mounted behind Andrew’s office desk.
Security opened it.
A folded ownership certificate rested inside.
It granted the holder a claim against forty percent of the original Escalante investment.
The document was old.
Its legal power remained uncertain.
Its emotional power was enormous.
Andrew finally understood why Elias wanted him protected.
If Andrew controlled the certificate and Rafael controlled the stolen voting shares, they could challenge Mariana’s ownership.
Mariana faced Daniel.
“Why did Elias kidnap you?”
“I refused to give him my certificate.”
“Where is it?”
Daniel smiled weakly.
“Somewhere he will never find.”
A security officer entered.
“We located the source of the financial attack.”
“Can you shut it down?” Mariana asked.
“We already did.”
Relief moved through the room.
Then the officer continued.
“The transfers were a distraction.”
“From what?”
“Someone entered the Escalante medical center using your authorization.”
Mariana’s father had been taken there after collapsing during the headquarters lockdown.
She called the hospital.
A nurse answered in tears.
Alejandro was missing.
The surveillance system showed a doctor taking him through a private exit.
The doctor’s face was hidden.
But the woman pushing Alejandro’s wheelchair looked directly at the camera.
She had Mariana’s eyes.
May you like
Her mother was alive.
And she had just kidnapped her father.
