Chapter 1 - The Voice from the Crypt
The rain pelted down in freezing sheets, plastering my black funeral dress against my skin as the blood from my forehead trickled down into my eyes, stinging with salt and iron.
Behind me, the soaring wrought-iron gates of the Albright Estate in Highland Hills clicked shut with a heavy, final thud. Standing on the second-floor balcony, shielded beneath a stone portico, Gavin Barrett swirled his scotch in a crystal tumbler, his mother Celina beside him in her bright red dress, her laughter carried away by the howling wind.
My hands trembled violently as I reached deep inside my waterlogged coat pocket, pulling out the thick parchment envelope my father, Ross Albright, had handed me two weeks before his fatal car crash.
"If anything ever happens to me, Clara—if I suddenly fall ill, or if an accident takes me—you break this seal immediately," he had warned me, his blue eyes intense, filled with an unspoken foreboding. "Do not trust Gavin. Do not trust anyone."
Before my thumb could tear through the heavy red wax seal, a sharp vibration rattled against my hip.
My personal cell phone—the one device Gavin’s security guards had missed when they stripped me of my purse, gold jewelry, and shoes—was ringing.
The caller ID displayed a string of encrypted digits: +000-000-0000.
My thumb swiped the screen. I pressed the cold glass to my wet ear.
"Hello?" I gasped, my voice raw, choked with rainwater and blood.
"Clara."
The breath left my lungs. My knees buckled, sending me sliding onto the muddy concrete sidewalk.
It was a voice I had wept over for three straight days. A voice I had watched being laid to rest in a polished rosewood casket only four hours ago at Saint Jude’s Cemetery. A deep, gravelly baritone that commanded respect in every boardroom from New York to Tokyo.
"D-Dad?" I sobbed, clutching the phone with both hands. "Dad... oh God, am I dying? Am I losing my mind?"
"You are completely sane, my little warrior," Ross Albright’s voice resonated through the receiver, strong, steady, and terrifyingly alive. "And if you are receiving this call, it means Gavin has finally revealed his true colors and thrown you out of the house."
"Dad, he took everything!" I screamed into the storm, tears mixing with the rain pouring down my face. "He forged my signature while I was sick! He took your sixty percent share of Summit Enterprises! He fired your entire personal board! He and Celina threw me out barefoot in the street!"
A dark, dangerous laugh echoed from the other end of the line—a laugh that made the hair on my arms stand up.
"I know, sweetheart," Ross said softly. "Because I set the trap for him myself."
"What?" I gasped, stunned into silence.
"Three months ago, my private intelligence team discovered that Gavin was secretly meeting with Marcus Vance—the head of Vance Global Logistics, our fiercest corporate rival," Ross explained. "Gavin was leaking Summit’s financial reports, cutting off our supply chains, and planning a hostile takeover. But worse than that, Clara... two weeks ago, my mechanics found a remote-activated signal device attached to the brake assembly of my sedan."
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit of horror. "He... he tried to murder you?"
"He thought he succeeded," Ross replied grimly. "The body in that rosewood casket belonged to a terminally ill John Doe from out of state who agreed to let us use his remains in exchange for a twenty-million-dollar trust set up for his orphaned grandchildren. I faked my death in that fiery crash on Route 9, Clara. The state police commissioner, the medical examiner, and the Chief Legal Officer of Summit Enterprises are all in on it."
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"Where are you?" I demanded, scrambling up from the curb, my heart hammering like a war drum.
"Look up at the end of the street, Clara," Ross instructed. "A dark tinted SUV is sitting fifty yards past the estate gates. Get inside. It’s time for us to tear Gavin Barrett’s world down to the foundation."
