Chapter 13 - The Hidden Archive
Hours later, back at the Bennett estate, Daniel sat alone in his father's old private study on the lowest level of the mansion—a room that had remained locked and untouched since the elder Bennett's passing five years ago.
The room smelled of old leather, aged paper, and polished mahogany. Dust motes danced lazily in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun as Daniel unlocked the heavy wooden filing cabinets using a physical brass key that had hung on his key ring for decades.
He wasn't looking for corporate ledgers or financial statements anymore. He was looking for family history.
As he sifted through old photo albums, legal deeds, and personal correspondence from the late nineties, a thick, leather-bound journal caught his eye. It was labeled simply with a handwritten date: 1998 – Partnership & Dissolution.
Daniel pulled it out, blowing a thin layer of dust off the cover, and sat down at the heavy oak desk. He opened the first page.
The handwriting was his father's sharp, precise cursive. But as he turned past the initial business entries detailing the early days of Bennett Enterprises, the names changed.
One name appeared repeatedly in the margins, circled aggressively in red ink: Arthur Bennett.
Daniel frowned, leaning closer to the page. Arthur Bennett was his father's estranged younger brother—his uncle—who had supposedly died in a tragic private plane crash off the coast of Maine over twenty-two years ago, long before Daniel had taken over the reins of the company.
According to the official historical record, Arthur had attempted to embezzle corporate funds from the family’s original shipping enterprise, been caught red-handed, and fled the country just days before his aircraft went down. The case had been closed, the assets absorbed, and the family name scrubbed clean.
Except, as Daniel turned to a folded financial ledger tucked into the back of the journal, a chilling fact stared back at him.
The offshore trust fund that had financed Sophia Bennett's family estate during their bankruptcy wasn't registered under a modern shell corporation.
It was drawn from the Arthur Bennett Trust Estate—an active, multi-billion-dollar legacy account that had been secretly funneled through a Swiss intermediary for over two decades.
Arthur Bennett wasn't dead.
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And someone in his immediate bloodline was still alive, carrying a multi-generational grudge, and using Sophia as the vanguard for a complete and total destruction of the Bennett family name.
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