Chapter 5 - The Uninvited Guest
I didn't wait for David to finish speaking. I grabbed my coat, told him to lock the boardroom doors behind him, and took the private express elevator straight down to the underground parking garage.
During the frantic drive back to Lincoln Park, my mind raced through every possible scenario. The police were supposed to be at the hospital guarding Marcus. Sophia had supposedly fled the city. Richard was sitting in a security holding room downtown waiting for interrogation.
So who the hell was using my keycard to walk into my empty penthouse?
When I unlocked the penthouse door twenty minutes later, the apartment was dead silent. The lingering scent of the mushroom soup we had eaten hours earlier still hung faintly in the air around the dining table, though Marcus’s chair had been pushed back haphazardly where he collapsed.
I stepped inside, my heart hammering against my ribs, and moved toward the hallway leading to our private study.
The heavy oak door of the study was cracked open. A single strip of warm light spilled across the hardwood floor.
I pushed the door open slowly, holding my breath.
Sitting in Marcus’s leather armchair, casually flipping through the pages of my private corporate ledger, was a man I had not seen in over six years. He was older now, his hair graying at the temples, wearing an expensive wool overcoat that contrasted sharply with the dust motes dancing in the afternoon sunlight.
He looked up, meeting my eyes with a calm, unimpressed smile.
"Hello, Victoria," my uncle Robert said softly, closing the ledger. "It seems you've been quite busy cleaning house today."
I stood frozen in the doorway, my hand gripping the wooden frame so tightly my knuckles ached. Robert wasn't just my estranged uncle—the man who had supposedly vanished after my father’s death, cutting off all contact with our family.
He was the former majority shareholder of the very Cincinnati firm Marcus had worked for before coming to Chicago.
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"You," I breathed, the entire dark puzzle finally snapping together with terrifying clarity. "You were behind the buyout all along."
Robert smiled, standing up slowly and buttoning his coat. "My dear, Marcus was never smart enough to orchestrate a corporate takeover on his own. He was just the instrument. But family... family always leaves the best backdoors open."
