Chapter 7 - Blood on the MarbleAgent Pike moved faster than I expected.
Within seconds, teams were redirected to Teterboro, radios crackling, names flying through the air. Helena was removed from the cellar in handcuffs, though she walked as if the agents were staff escorting her to a car.
Grant was not cuffed yet.
That bothered me.
He noticed.
“You want them to drag me out?” he asked.
“I want you to tell me what happens at the airfield.”
He tilted his head.
“Why would I help you?”
“Because your mother just abandoned you with federal agents, frozen accounts, and a stolen company.”
His jaw tightened.
“She won’t get far.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
Grant looked toward the red ledger, now sealed in evidence.
“Mother never plays one ending.”
It was the first honest thing he had said all night.
Pike approached me.
“We need the pendant.”
I closed my fist around it.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Mrs. Blackwood—”
“My aunt is at that airfield because of this family. My mother died because of this family. And everyone in this room has spent decades treating me like a document they could file away.” I lifted my chin. “I will cooperate. But I am done handing over pieces of myself without answers.”
Pike studied me.
Then he nodded once.
“Fair.”
Grant laughed softly.
“You have no idea what that key opens.”
I turned to him.
“Then educate me.”
His eyes flicked toward Pike.
“You think I’ll confess in front of him?”
“I think your mother called you weak because you always choose the wrong audience.”
That hit.
Grant’s face flushed.
“You want the truth?” he said. “Fine. The Voss trust isn’t just money. It contains voting control. Your mother hid a poison pill inside the original company structure. If a direct Voss heir appeared and proved coercion, Blackwood Global would revert.”
I could barely process the words.
“Revert to whom?”
He stared at me.
“To you.”
The room seemed to expand around me.
Blackwood Global was not just a family company. It owned shipping routes, hotels, infrastructure contracts, energy assets, media holdings. The Blackwoods did not merely have wealth. They had influence that bent cities and silenced investigations.
And now Grant was telling me it might legally belong to the daughter of the woman they erased.
Pike said, “That matches what our forensic team suspected.”
I looked at him sharply.
“You knew?”
“We knew there was a hidden ownership mechanism. We did not know the living heir had been pulled into the family through marriage.”
Grant smiled with sudden bitterness.
“It was elegant, wasn’t it? Marry her, isolate her, make her dependent, get her signature, then declare the old claims waived.”
“And after that?” I asked.
His silence answered.
I remembered Helena’s little remarks about children. How she pushed wine at dinners and frowned when I refused. How Grant insisted we should “wait” before starting a family, then suddenly changed his mind after the papers came.
A cold understanding crawled over me.
“You needed an heir too.”
Grant looked away.
I almost stepped back.
Not because I feared him.
Because I finally saw the entire cage.
Marriage. Money. Bloodline. Control.
At the top of the stairs, an agent called down.
“Sir, Teterboro team has contact.”
Pike grabbed his radio.
A burst of static.
Then a voice shouted, “Shots fired!”
My body went numb.
Pike turned to me.
May you like
“Stay here.”
But I was already running.
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