Inside was a trust amendment dated eight months earlier.
“I discovered someone had inserted an incapacity clause into an old draft,” Eleanor said. “So I revoked it.”
Shiaoza seized the amendment.
His eyes stopped on the last page.
The voting shares had not transferred to him.
They had transferred that morning at 9:00 a.m., when the board certified the new CEO.
To me.
I controlled the company.
“Why?” I whispered.
Eleanor looked at me.
“Because for ten years, every person in this family tried to make you smaller so you would be easier to manage. And every year, you became more capable anyway.”
Shiaoza jumped to his feet.
“This is theft!”
“It is my company,” Eleanor said.
“It’s my birthright!”
Her expression became completely still.
Then came the truth none of us had expected.
“No, Shiaoza.”
He stopped.
Eleanor looked first at Jang, then him.
“You never had a birthright.”
No one moved.
“Lian is my only biological child.”
The room seemed to lose air.
After losing Lian to family pressure at nineteen, Eleanor had been unable to have another child. Years later, she and her husband privately adopted a baby.
Shiaoza.
They loved him, raised him, and gave him their name.
But the old trust he had attempted to manipulate contained a biological-heir provision he believed protected him.
It did not.
He had hidden his half-sister because her existence destroyed the inheritance claim he intended to use.
That was why he never told Eleanor he had found her.
That was why he kept Jang nearby.
That was why companies had been placed in her name.
She was not simply a convenient scapegoat.
She was the only person whose identity could prove he had no automatic claim at all.
Shiaoza sank into his chair.
For the first time in ten years, my husband seemed to have no strategy left.
Only panic.
The doors opened again.
Two federal investigators entered with building security.
Shiaoza turned toward me.
“You called them?”
I shook my head.
Jang wiped her cheeks.
“I did.”
