Chapter 7 - The Blueprint of Betrayal
The dial tone droned on for three agonizing seconds before I slammed the handset back onto its cradle. The silence in the hotel suite felt heavier than lead. Mom was silently weeping into her hands, her shoulders shaking rhythmically, while Dad slumped back against the desk, staring blindly at the carpet as if the floor had just opened up beneath his feet.
"They're going to tear it down," Dad whispered, his voice cracking. "Everything I built with my own two hands... thirty-eight years of wood, iron, and sweat. Gone just like that."
"They aren't tearing down anything until we look at the actual paperwork," I said, my mind racing as I opened my laptop on the desk and fired up my corporate VPN. "Dad, think. When Derek had you sign that secondary liability rider, where did it happen? Was it at a bank? A lawyer's office? A notary?"
Manuel rubbed his tired eyes, trying to claw through the fog of exhaustion and shock. "It... it wasn't a bank. Derek brought a man to the house. A notary public. He said it was just an update to the workshop's liability insurance because of new state regulations."
"What was the notary's name?" I asked, my fingers flying across the keyboard as I pulled up public notary registries for Chatham County.
"I don't remember," Dad muttered, shaking his head. "Wait. There was a stamp. A brass seal. It had a name on it—H. R. Vance? No, H. R. Beckett."
I stopped typing. My fingers hovered over the keys.
Beckett.
I pulled up a corporate intelligence database I used for high-stakes tech acquisitions—a tool that cost me five thousand dollars a month to access, but tracked hidden beneficial ownership across shell corporations nationwide. I typed in H. R. Beckett Notary Public Savannah.
A single result popped up. License suspended three years ago for corporate identity fraud. And connected to that license as a primary corporate officer?
Meridian Trust Holdings LLC.
"I found them," I said quietly, the glow of the screen illuminating my face in the dim room. "Dad, Beckett isn't an independent notary. He's a professional front man for a real estate syndicate that specializes in forced foreclosures and distress acquisitions across the Southeast. And Derek didn't just sign a liability rider... he signed a full general power of attorney granting them liquidation rights over every asset registered under your name."
Mom lifted her head, her mascara running in dark streaks down her cheeks. "Derek... our Derek did that? Why would he sell out his own family?"
"Because Derek has half a million dollars in online gambling debts and high-stakes crypto margins that he’s been hiding from everyone for two years," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, flat register. "He didn't sell us out by accident, Mom. He did it to pay off his bookmakers, and they used this engagement weekend as a smoke screen to execute the final takeover while we were all distracted by champagne and guest lists."
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Dad let out a low, guttural sound—halfway between a sob and a laugh of utter disbelief. He stood up abruptly, his hands balling into tight fists at his sides.
"Where is he?" Dad demanded, his voice suddenly hard as iron. "Where is my son right now?"
