Billionaire regrets: Chasing his lost love

The Evidence

Sienna

The Falcon’s may have a hand in the death of my parents?

I didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence Charles prepared that stared at me from my lap was no joke.

Why would they? How could…

But after what I’d seen and endured for three years, could I really doubt this evidence? Could I doubt Charles? The Falcons were capable of anything as long as it benefited them. But would they go as far as murder?

Would they go as far as killing my parents and puppeteering me? The latter was the easiest to believe. I still find it hard to wrap my head around the idea of them being involved in my parent’s death.

“I have so much to tell you,” Uncle Charles cut through my thoughts, taking my hand in his. The warmth from his hand seeped into me, pushing the cold and shock away. “And very little time to say it.”

I stared at him and I saw nothing but my father’s face. The last time I’d seen him was when he was leaving for a business meeting. He never came back. The news I heard next was that their car had run off the road.

They didn’t make it.

Tears dropped from my eyes and Uncle Charles wiped them off immediately. “You will get them back for everything,” he said confidently. “And I’ll be here every step of the way.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. It felt like just yesterday I lost my parents. The wound, which never healed, had opened up again and the pain was even more intense than that day. I was brought to identify their bodies in the morgue.

“Your father came to me three days before that meeting,” Uncle Charles said, reaching into his briefcase where he pulled out a folder and placed it on the bed between us. “Do you remember the meeting?”

I nodded. How could I not? It was the meeting he never came back from. He left that morning, but his corpse was all that was returned. How could I ever forget that meeting?

“He was scared when he came to me, Sienna,” Uncle Charles continued, his eyes suddenly becoming misty. “I remembered your father was everything but never scared.”

I took the folder and opened it, anything to keep my mind off the events of the past three years. But the emails, photographs and financial statements the folder contained didn’t help. My hands trembled as I looked through them. As my mind thought about what they might mean.

“Your father was beginning to notice patterns I’d been telling him about for years. I was glad he was finally seeing the things I saw, but they were on to him. Especially after he hired that private investigator…”

I looked up at him, frowning. I was never aware my father had hired a private investigator. Well, at the time, I wasn’t aware of anything, especially if it concerned the family business. I’d wanted to stay far from it. To build my name without relying on my father.

I almost laughed at that thought.

“What did the private investigator find?” I asked, trying to direct my thoughts away from the negative.

“Arthur Falcon had people on the inside. Even some of your father’s most trusted advisors were on his side,” he wiped his eyes and glanced at me. “Do you remember Harrison Grant?”

I was surprised that I did. He’d been one of my father’s few friends and I recalled that he’d attended my parents’ funeral. With lots of kind things to say about them.

“He was also on Arthur’s side as one of his inside sources. He sold your father out for a seat on Falcon Holding’s board and enough money to live comfortably for a lifetime.”

The words hung in the air between us. The man who’d held my hand at my parents’ funeral. The man who’d told me how much my father meant to him.

Of course, he did. And still, did he feel any iota of shame and guilt when he showed up at their funeral with lots of good things to say about them? I bet he didn’t. My chest twisted painfully, the anger that had been smoldering ever since Margaret’s visit erupted.

“After your father discovered the truth of the whole affair,” Uncle Charles continued, “he wanted to confront Arthur. But then, as now, Arthur was a powerful man just as dangerous as he was connected. Instead of confronting him directly, your father decided to expose what he’d found.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, dreading his next words even though I knew deep inside what he was about to say.

“Arthur found out somehow, and moved first. On the way to that meeting, your father’s car ran off the road, and they died.” I closed my eyes, trying to push away the vivid images of my father’s pale face as he lay in the morgue. “I don’t think it was just a coincidence that he died that day.”

The images didn’t leave me no matter how hard I tried to push them away. The sinking feeling I felt standing in that morgue, looking down at my father’s pale face, returned with full force.

The Falcons really took everything from me. Everything.

“I want them to pay!” I had no idea when those words left my mouth, but I felt nothing but deep, overwhelming loathing and a desire for revenge at that moment. I knew I’d give anything to see the Falcons on their knees, reduced to nothing.

As though Charles had been waiting for just those words, he took a deep breath and straightened.

“That’s what I’ve been preparing for these past three years.” He pulled out another folder, and when he opened it, I saw it contained new identities, all of them carrying my photo. “If we want to get back at them for what they did, then we have to become even more powerful than the Falcons. It won’t be easy, but we will do it… You are your father’s daughter after all.”

I clenched my fist. “What did you plan, Uncle Charles?”

He looked me dead in the eye and this time, I saw all the emotions he’d been holding back. The pain, the regrets, the shame. Everything he felt after the death of my father. It was as though I was seeing myself inside him.

“For now, Sienna. You will have to disappear. The plan will start after you’re back better and stronger than the Falcons could ever have imagined.”