C19 THE PERSON MY FATHER TRUSTED

Isabella had barely slept when she left the mansion the following morning. The name on Daniel’s authorisation letter had disturbed her more than the photograph of Victor Hale. She knew the person connected to the document, and that familiarity made the possibility of betrayal difficult to accept.

Alexander found her near the front entrance, holding her phone and a folded copy of the letter.

“You’re going to confront them,” he said.

“I’m going to ask questions.”

“Without telling me where you’re going?”

Isabella looked at him. “If this person has been working with Victor, every minute we spend discussing our next move gives them time to disappear.”

Alexander did not attempt to pretend she was wrong. He insisted on accompanying her, but she refused to let his security team approach the meeting before they knew what they were dealing with. They agreed that Alexander would remain nearby while Isabella made the first contact.

Before leaving, she sent a message to the person whose name appeared on the letter. She asked for a private meeting that afternoon and gave no explanation. The reply came almost immediately.

I was wondering when you would come to me.

Isabella read the message twice. There was no surprise in it, no question about what she wanted. Whoever had received it seemed to have been expecting her.

She showed Alexander.

“That sounds like someone who knows what you’ve found,” he said.

“Or someone who has been waiting for me to find it.”

They arranged to meet at the former Hartwell Designs office, a building Isabella had avoided since the company collapsed. The business had once occupied three floors, with designers, accountants, and buyers moving through its corridors every day. Now only a small administrative team rented space on the ground floor.

Returning made her remember her father’s final months: the unanswered calls, the growing debts, and the day Daniel had come home unusually quiet. He had told her that business problems could be solved if people remained honest. At the time, she had believed him.

Now she wondered whether he had been trying to reassure her or prepare her for something he could not explain.

Alexander parked two streets away. He wanted her to wait until his security director confirmed the building was safe, but Isabella was already walking toward the entrance.

She found Samuel Reed in the small conference room on the ground floor.

The former Hartwell accountant rose when she entered. He looked older than he had at Bellamy Café, and his eyes moved immediately to the folded paper in her hand.

“You found the letter,” he said.

Isabella stopped beside the table.

“You knew about it?”

Samuel closed the door. “I knew your father had prepared an authorisation document. I didn’t know where it had ended up.”

“Your name is on it.”

He did not deny it.

For a moment, Isabella could hear the distant movement of people in the corridor. Samuel had worked for her father for years. He had attended family dinners, helped Daniel organise charitable events, and once stayed late at their house to help Isabella prepare a presentation for university. He had been more than an employee, which made the possibility of his involvement feel personal.

“Why would my father appoint you to represent him in a secret account?” she asked.

“Because he trusted me to keep records that other people wanted destroyed.”

“That doesn’t explain why you never told me.”

Samuel looked down at the table. “Your father believed the less you knew, the safer you would be.”

“That excuse has followed me through every conversation about his death.”

“I know.”

“No. You don’t know what it has cost me to discover that people I trusted have been withholding the truth.”

Samuel accepted her anger without defending himself. He opened a drawer and removed a sealed envelope bearing Daniel’s handwriting.

“Your father gave me this shortly before he died. He told me to keep it until someone came looking for the original partnership agreement. I was supposed to deliver it only when I could be certain the person asking was genuinely trying to uncover what happened.”

Isabella recognised the handwriting immediately. Her father had written her name on birthday cards in the same careful style.

“Why didn’t you give it to me when we met before?”

“Because I was being watched. I wanted to know whether you were being followed before I brought you anything connected to the account.”

She thought of the man who had approached Samuel outside Bellamy Café and the messages that had followed their meeting. His explanation was possible, but she could not afford to accept it without proof.

“Did you meet Victor Hale recently?”

Samuel’s expression changed.

It was small, almost invisible, but Isabella noticed. He took a breath and looked toward the closed door.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“Because he contacted me.”

“What did he want?”

“The original page.”

Isabella placed the photograph on the table. “You met him with someone wearing that ring.”

Samuel studied the image. His face tightened when he recognised the building behind them.

“I didn’t know he had been photographed.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Samuel explained that Victor had contacted him through an intermediary, claiming he wanted to return a document taken from Daniel’s files. He had arranged the meeting because he believed Victor might finally be ready to expose the person who altered the agreement.

But when Samuel arrived, Victor had not come alone. The second person had remained inside a vehicle, refusing to approach them. Samuel had seen the signet ring when the person reached for a folder.

“Did you recognise them?” Isabella asked.

“No. But Victor was afraid of them.”

“Victor Hale is responsible for suspicious transactions that helped destroy my father’s company. Why would you believe anything he told you?”

“Because he said Daniel had kept a copy of the original page, and that the person who ordered its removal still had access to the Hart family’s legal records.”

Samuel pushed the envelope toward her.

“I wanted to find out whether he was telling the truth before I involved you. I should have told you about the meeting, but I was afraid that if Victor discovered I had shared anything, he would disappear with the only evidence that could prove what happened.”

Isabella did not forgive him, but his explanation gave the photograph a different meaning. Samuel might not have been helping Victor conceal the truth. He might have been trying to recover the evidence Victor controlled.

She opened the envelope.

Inside was a letter Daniel had written several days before his death. It described his growing suspicion that the final partnership agreement had been changed after the two families approved its original terms. Daniel believed someone had used his trust in the company’s legal advisers to replace the document before it reached the official records.

The letter also mentioned Northbridge Holdings and a private account that could not be accessed by either family alone. Daniel had instructed Samuel to preserve the financial records and never allow the account to be closed.

At the bottom, Daniel had added one sentence.

If the original page disappears, find the person who witnessed the agreement before it was changed. They know which signature was forged.

Isabella read it again. The letter did not name the witness, but it confirmed that Daniel had suspected the agreement was altered before his death.

“Did your father tell you who witnessed it?” she asked herself aloud, then looked at Samuel. “Did Daniel tell you?”

“He mentioned a meeting attended by four people. He and Richard were there, and Victor delivered the documents. The fourth person was supposed to confirm that the final agreement matched the terms they had accepted.”

“Who was that person?”

Samuel shook his head. “Daniel never gave me a name. He said the witness had been deceived too, and that accusing the wrong person could destroy the only chance of proving what happened.”

A sound came from the corridor.

Samuel immediately gathered the papers, but Isabella caught his wrist.

“Wait.”

Through the narrow window in the conference-room door, she saw a man in a dark jacket standing near reception. He was watching the room. When he noticed Isabella looking at him, he turned and headed for the exit.

She called Alexander.

“He’s here,” she said. “Someone followed us.”

Alexander was already moving toward the building. Isabella followed the man into the corridor, but by the time she reached the entrance, he had disappeared into the street. Alexander arrived seconds later and sent his security director to check the surrounding cameras.

Samuel remained in the conference room, pale and shaken.

“He knows I have the letter,” he said.

“Who does?”

“I don’t know. But whoever has been monitoring me knew I would come here when you contacted me.”

Isabella returned to the table. She had come expecting to confront a possible traitor and had instead discovered that Samuel possessed a letter confirming Daniel’s suspicions. Yet his decision to meet Victor had exposed him to the same danger that had followed them from the beginning.

Alexander returned after speaking with his security director. The cameras had captured the man leaving, but his face remained hidden beneath a cap. He had entered the building using a visitor pass issued under a false name.

The security director was tracing the pass while Alexander examined the documents Samuel had provided.

“There’s something missing,” Alexander said.

He compared Daniel’s letter with the memorandum Martin had supplied. Both referred to the original agreement, but neither contained the page that established the ownership restriction. Samuel admitted he had never possessed that page. Daniel had told him only that it would be the most important evidence if the dispute ever became public.

“Then Victor still has it,” Isabella said.

“Or the person he works for does,” Alexander replied.

Samuel looked at the photograph again. “Victor told me he wanted to return it. He said he was tired of being used as the person everyone blamed.”

Isabella could not decide whether Victor’s apparent fear made him more dangerous or more useful. He had participated in the financial dealings, yet he might also have been hiding evidence that implicated someone more powerful.

Alexander asked Samuel to remain somewhere secure while they investigated the false visitor pass. Samuel agreed, but before leaving, he handed Isabella a small memory card from inside the envelope.

“Your father asked me to keep a backup of the financial records,” he explained. “I never opened every file because I didn’t know which ones could put you at risk.”

Alexander found a laptop and examined the card without connecting it to Sterling Global’s network. The files contained payment records, internal correspondence, and a short video recorded in the days before Daniel died.

The video showed Daniel sitting alone in his office, speaking directly to the camera. He appeared tired, but his voice was steady.

“If you are watching this,” Daniel said, “then the agreement has been altered, and I have failed to stop it. The person who changed it was trusted by both families. Do not assume the person who benefits from the change was the person who planned it.”

The recording ended abruptly.

Isabella stared at the blank screen. Her father had understood that the conspiracy was larger than a simple business dispute. He had also warned against blaming the obvious beneficiary without uncovering who had arranged the deception.

A final file contained a list of payments approved before Daniel’s death. One entry had been marked with the divided-circle symbol. Beside it was a reference to a meeting scheduled for the night Daniel died.

The attendee field had been deleted, but the file’s revision history preserved the initials of the person who removed it.

Isabella recognised the initials immediately.

They belonged to the person whose name appeared on Daniel’s authorisation letter.

She looked at Samuel, then at Alexander. The evidence no longer merely suggested that the person had been close to her family. It showed that they had altered a record connected to Daniel’s final meeting.

Before Isabella could speak, a message appeared on her phone.

SAMUEL TOLD YOU WHAT HE KNOWS. NOW ASK HIM WHAT HE DID AFTER YOUR FATHER DIED.

She raised her eyes toward Samuel.

His expression told her the message had struck something he had hoped would remain buried.

“Samuel,” Isabella said quietly, “what did you do with the original page after my father died?”

He did not answer.

And for the first time since they had met, Isabella wondered whether the man who had helped her uncover the truth had also helped keep part of it hidden.