“Turn it off,” Richard hissed.
“I imagine you have a guest with you,” Eleanor said. “Is it Miss Hayes? Or perhaps the flight attendant from the Singapore trip? It doesn’t matter. They are all interchangeable to you, aren’t they?”
Savannah recoiled as if slapped.
“I knew, Richard,” Eleanor said softly. The intimacy of her tone made it worse than a scream. “I’ve known for two years. I knew about the apartment you leased for her. I knew about the consulting fees—$1.2 million funnelled to a shell company in her name. You thought I was dying, so you got sloppy. You thought the sick wife upstairs was too medicated to read the bank statements.”
She leaned into the camera.
“I wasn’t just noticing, Richard. I was documenting. I have the receipts. I have the emails. I have the footage from the hotel elevators.”
“She’s bluffing,” Richard groaned, putting his head in his hands. “My god, she’s bluffing.”
“But that isn’t why we are here,” Eleanor said. “You see, Richard, you made a mistake. You fell in love with the idea of being a billionaire, but you forgot who actually owned the billions. You thought you were waiting for me to die to get your payday.”
She paused, and the silence in the room was absolute.
“But you were too impatient. Remember the ‘Corporate Restructuring and Asset Protection’ agreement you made me sign in September? The one you said would protect the company from lawsuits?”
Richard’s head snapped up. His eyes were wide, panicked.
“Yes,” Eleanor said, answering his look. “You had your lawyers draft it. You were so proud of it. It separated our personal assets from the corporate holdings to ‘shield’ the company. It stipulated that in the event of a divorce, the spouse—me—would retain control of the company trust, and the other party—you—would receive a one-time settlement of $5 million and the deeds to the residential properties.”
“But we didn’t divorce!” Richard yelled at the screen. “We were married when she died!”
“Actually,” Eleanor said, checking her watch in the video, “Mr. Harrison filed the final divorce decree on October 1st. You were served the papers on August 10th. You signed them, Richard. You signed them in a stack of contracts your assistant brought you before you flew to St. Barts with Savannah. You didn’t read them. You never read the fine print.”
“No…” Richard whispered. “No, that’s impossible.”
“The divorce was finalized in a closed jurisdiction three weeks before I died,” Eleanor stated. “The settlement has been triggered. The $5 million was wired to your account this morning. The houses are yours. But the company? Vance Holdings?”
She smiled, and it was the smile of a predator who has just closed its jaws.
“You are no longer my husband, Richard. You are a legal stranger. And strangers don’t inherit empires.”
Savannah stood up, her chair scraping violently against the marble floor. “Five million? You told me you were worth ten billion!”
“I am!” Richard pleaded, grabbing her arm. “This is a trick! It’s a technicality!”
“The company,” Eleanor’s voice commanded attention back to the screen. “My father’s company. I would never let it fall into the hands of a man who treats loyalty like a disposable commodity.”
“Then who?” Richard screamed at the screen. “Who gets it? There’s no one else! Clara can’t run it! You have no one!”
“I leave Vance Holdings,” Eleanor said, her voice softening with profound pride, “to the only man who has ever truly protected me. To the son you discarded because he wouldn’t be your clone.”
“Julian?” Richard laughed, a harsh, barking sound of hysteria. “Julian? The hippie? The artist? He hasn’t spoken to us in ten years! He’s probably painting goats in the Swiss Alps! He can’t run a lemonade stand, let alone a conglomerate!”
“You really didn’t look, did you?” Eleanor said. “You assume that because he rejected you, he rejected me.”
The screen faded to black.
Richard sat there, breathing hard, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “It’s a bluff. It has to be. Julian is a loser. Even if he inherits it, I’ll manipulate him. I’ll be the trustee. I’ll run it from behind the scenes. He’s weak.”
The heavy mahogany doors opened again.
And the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees.
A man walked in. He was tall, with the same dark, wavy hair as Richard, but his eyes were all Eleanor. He was not wearing paint-stained overalls. He was wearing a charcoal three-piece suit that cost more than my car, tailored to emphasize a physique that was disciplined and imposing. He carried a sleek aluminum briefcase.
He didn’t look like a hippie. He looked like a shark that had just smelled blood in the water.
“Hello, Father,” Julian said. His voice was a deep, polished baritone that echoed in the silent room.
“Julian?” Richard blinked, disoriented. “My boy. You… you look good.”
“I wish I could say the same for you,” Julian replied, walking past Richard to stand at the head of the table. He didn’t sit. He loomed.
“Julian, listen,” Richard scrambled up, putting on his best salesman smile. “Your mother… she wasn’t well. She’s made a mess of things. But we can fix it. You and me. Father and son. I can guide you. The business world is a shark tank, you need experience.”
“I have experience,” Julian said coldly.
