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A man who had died eighteen months ago.
A man whose funeral I had planned down to the white lilies on his coffin.
A man who, according to the date printed in the corner of the photo, had been alive six months after we buried him.
I sat down because my knees simply stopped working.
Thomas Whitmore had been wealthy, charming, manipulative, and adored by people who never had to live under his control. He had built Whitmore Medical Capital from nothing and treated his family like an extension of his empire.
Grant worshipped him.
I feared him.
Thomas had never liked me. Not openly. He was too polished for that. But he had a way of looking at me as if I were a painting hanging in the wrong room.
“You’re very good at making things look beautiful,” he once told me. “Just be careful not to confuse presentation with power.”
At the time, I had smiled politely.
Now, staring at a photograph that should not exist, I wondered whether he had been warning me.
Or threatening me.
I plugged the flash drive into my laptop.
A folder opened.
Videos.
Documents.
Audio files.
Financial records.
At the top was a file named:
“FOR VANESSA — WHEN GRANT FINALLY FAILS.”
I clicked.
Thomas Whitmore appeared on screen.
Older. Thinner. Sitting in what looked like a private medical suite. His skin was pale, his hair silver, his eyes still sharp enough to cut glass.
“Vanessa,” he said.
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