Chapter 8 - The Return to San Diego
The flight back to San Diego the following morning was quiet, save for the hum of the turboprop engine. I had left Gaby and her sisters in Sarah’s care, promising them that this trip was strictly business—a final legal step to secure our future once and for all.
Mercy Hospital smelled of antiseptic and polished linoleum, a sharp reminder of the sterile hospital rooms where Florence had questioned my worth after each of my daughters was born.
When I pushed open the door to Room 412, Walter Miller looked smaller than he ever had in the boardroom. Stripped of his tailored tweed jacket and booming authority, he lay propped up against a bank of pillows, an oxygen cannula resting beneath his nose, staring out the window at the distant skyline of the city where we had spent sixteen years building an empire.
He didn't turn his head immediately as I stepped inside.
“You came,” Walter rasped, his voice dry and tired.
“Gavin said you wanted to talk,” I replied, stopping halfway across the room. I didn't sit down. I kept my hands folded in front of me, maintaining a safe, professional distance.
Walter let out a dry, rattling sigh. “Raymond is a fool, Brenda. He inherited my stubbornness without my common sense. And Florence... Florence never understood that a business isn't built on a bloodline; it’s built on a balance sheet.”
“You took a long time to realize that, Walter,” I said evenly. “You let your wife treat my daughters like placeholders for a boy who wasn't even legitimate.”
Walter flinched, his weathered hands gripping the thin hospital blanket. He didn't deny it. Instead, he reached slowly into the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a heavy, leather-bound ledger with cracked spine—the original company record from 1998, long before Raymond and I were married.
“Victoria Vance didn't just retire fifteen years ago,” Walter said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “She was bought out because she tried to mortgage the company’s core patents to an offshore equity firm. I thought I had buried that agreement. But she used Raymond’s negligence to crawl back in.”
He held the ledger out toward me, his fingers trembling slightly.
“I didn't put Raymond’s name on the primary controlling shares, Brenda. Not originally,” Walter confessed, the words tasting like poison in his mouth. “I registered 51 percent in trust for the first direct descendant of Pacific Oak’s true founder—my brother, who died before the business was incorporated.”
I stared at him, my breath catching in my throat. “What are you talking about?”
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“Your father, Brenda,” Walter whispered, looking me dead in the eye. “Your father didn't just invest six million dollars in 2008. He bought out my brother’s dormant estate. You didn't marry into Pacific Oak to build it... you married into the company your family legally owned half of before we ever met.”
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