What the Emails Said

The emails arrived that night, forty-one of them, spanning nearly two years. Most confirmed what Elias already suspected — his father's growing trust in him, careful praise disguised as casual updates to Odette about "the numbers looking better lately, don't ask me how."

But three emails, dated eight months apart, were different. They were between Gerald and the company's outside accountant, and they weren't about Elias at all.

Discrepancies in the Ridgeline account. Again. I need you to pull the wire transfer records quietly — don't loop in Holden yet.

Elias forwarded them to Farida before he let himself think too hard about what they meant.

The formal mediation, three weeks later, was worse than Elias had braced for. Holden's lawyer, a sharp man in an expensive suit, asked with a straight face: "Isn't it true that a man in your client's condition would be, at minimum, a target for manipulation by employees looking to control the company through him?"

"My condition," Elias repeated, "is a spinal cord injury. It affects my legs. It has never once affected my judgment, and I'd invite you to find a single employee at Thorne Precision who agrees with your theory."

Nobody did. Three plant employees had already given sworn statements describing two years of decisions they'd assumed came from consultants or from Gerald himself, decisions that traced, once the timeline was laid bare, straight back to the man in the wheelchair at the end of the table.

Then Farida stood, unhurried, and placed a folder in front of Holden's lawyer.

"Before we continue discussing my client's fitness," she said, "I'd like to enter into record three wire transfers from the Ridgeline account, authorized under Holden Thorne's employee code, routed to an account that does not belong to Thorne Precision Works."

The room went silent in a way it hadn't yet that day. Holden's face drained of color so fast Elias almost felt something like pity.

"That's — those are consulting fees," Holden said, too fast, too loud. "Legitimate—"

"Then you won't mind," Farida said, "if we ask the consultant to confirm that."

Holden's lawyer leaned toward his client and whispered something urgent. Holden didn't answer him. He was staring at the folder like it might still, somehow, disappear if he looked at it hard enough — and it was in that silence that his phone began to ring, loud and insistent, the caller ID flashing a name that made his face go from pale to gray.