Chapter 3 - The Name on the ScreenThe name glaring back at me was Percival Kingsley, my father's own younger brother, currently president of our real estate development division.
I refused to believe it at first. Uncle Percival had been present at every single family birthday, holiday dinner, and milestone throughout my entire life. He'd held Gavin in his own arms the day he was born, and had personally taught me how to drive an old pickup truck out on our family ranch. Yet Adrian's attached file contained undeniable bank records from a shell corporation called Meridian Capital, showing over two and a half billion dollars transferred directly into accounts controlled by Victor Thorne.
I called Adrian back immediately and agreed to meet him at his physical rehabilitation clinic in downtown Larkspur.
He looked shockingly frail, leaning heavily on a walker, entirely stripped of the arrogant confidence that had once captivated me years earlier. He slid a second encrypted drive across the metal table toward me.
"Victor Thorne tried recruiting me to sabotage your family, over a year ago," Adrian admitted, voice barely above a whisper. "He wanted me to hand over your primary stock holdings. I refused, until he used Yasmin to trap me instead. Once I was in, I genuinely couldn't find a way back out without losing everything."
"That sob story doesn't actually make you a victim in my eyes, Adrian," I replied sternly.
"I know it doesn't," he said, staring down at his own trembling hands. "Just look at the files, Katrina. Percival's been tracking your family's every single move for decades now."
The drive contained a clear audio recording of Victor Thorne giving explicit orders to his operatives, instructing them to plant cash inside Gavin's truck. Our legal team rushed the footage straight to federal prosecutors, alongside traffic camera footage showing two unidentified men breaking into Gavin's vehicle inside a parking garage. Forty-eight hours later, every federal charge against my brother was completely dropped.
Gavin walked out of the police department and wrapped both arms around me so tightly he nearly knocked me clean off my feet.
"Yasmin wants to testify against Victor Thorne and Percival both," Gavin told me as we walked toward my car. "I don't know if I can ever fully forgive her for what she did to our family. But I won't let those monsters destroy her life simply for finally telling the truth."
"Forgiving someone doesn't actually mean pretending the damage never happened," I reminded him gently.
Yasmin gave a full, sworn deposition to federal authorities the very next morning, detailing the money, the threats, and the hidden surveillance. She admitted that while desperation had driven her initial choices, greed had kept her quiet afterward. She handed over encrypted voice memos, meeting locations, and photographs from secret strategy dinners held between Victor Thorne and Percival.
Retaliating instantly, Victor Thorne held an emergency press conference, broadcast live across the entire state, accusing Kingsley Global Enterprises of systemic financial fraud. Hours before going on air, he leaked a falsified psychiatric report to news outlets, claiming I was clinically paranoid and entirely unfit to lead a public company.
Our board called an immediate emergency meeting, and several senior executives suggested I take an indefinite leave of absence to let the whole storm pass over.
"I am not going to hide in the shadows purely to make a convenient lie feel more comfortable for this board," I declared, standing at the head of the conference table.
I presented official hospital documents proving that psychiatric report was a total forgery, followed by copies of the federal indictments and a massive growth strategy I'd been secretly developing all along. I revealed a multi-billion-dollar partnership with a leading medical technology firm, aimed at pioneering automated diagnostic systems — a contract worth considerably more than every single project we'd lost to Thorne Dynamics combined.
At ten that morning, our entire board watched Victor Thorne's press conference live across the wall monitors. He took the podium with a smug, thoroughly rehearsed smile for the cameras.
"Today, we will expose the deep structural corruption of a family that believes itself entirely above the law," Victor announced grandly to the assembled press corps.
Before he could display his own falsified documents, the massive digital screens behind his podium suddenly hijacked his feed, displaying instead his private text logs with Elias Cortez, his explicit instructions for framing Gavin, and the complete paper trail from Meridian Capital. Weldon had secured a federal court order to seize the servers of an intermediary tech firm, while one of Victor's panicked IT directors had quietly handed over the master backups to avoid prison time himself.
The room erupted into total chaos, reporters shouting questions all at once. Victor Thorne tried bolting toward the side exit, but federal agents already waited at the door to place him firmly in handcuffs.
His public downfall, though, did not end the war against our own company.
Just hours after Victor's arrest, a sophisticated cyberattack struck Kingsley Global Enterprises' central data center, paralyzing our infrastructure entirely. Purchase orders halted instantly. Global suppliers couldn't confirm wire transfers. Our stock price tumbled eighteen percent before noon. A mysterious entity began aggressively buying up floating shares through anonymous brokerage accounts, acting exactly as though they'd already planned for this precise moment of panic.
The board members spiraled into a total tailspin. "We need to sell off our real estate assets right now, before the market completely swallows us whole," one older director urged frantically.
"That's precisely what the attackers actually want us to do," I countered firmly. "They're manufacturing panic specifically so we surrender our core assets out of pure fear."
I immediately activated an off-grid backup server network I'd quietly installed upon returning as CEO, and publicly announced our massive medical tech alliance alongside an independent financial audit. Simultaneously, I petitioned regulatory authorities to trace the aggressive stock purchases — all of which pointed straight back to offshore trusts managed through Meridian Capital.
That evening, Percival appeared on a local business news network, claiming Kingsley Global Enterprises desperately needed calm, experienced leadership during this unprecedented storm. He carefully avoided using my name directly, though his subtle message landed crystal clear for every investor watching. Later that same night, he showed up unannounced at my parents' home carrying a purchase agreement, offering to buy out our family shares at a massive discount, framing it as protection from ruin.
My father, exhausted and heartbroken by the chaos, held a pen over the paper and very nearly signed it.
"Dad, if you put your own name on that paper, you won't have a company left to protect by tomorrow," I warned, stepping into the living room.
Percival slammed his fist onto the coffee table, face turning bright red. "Katrina's letting her own foolish pride drive this company straight into the ground, instead of actually using her head," he sneered.
I pulled a printed brokerage tracing report from my coat pocket and slid it directly in front of my father. "One of the primary offshore accounts attempting a hostile takeover of our stock today is directly tied to Percival's own construction firm," I revealed calmly.
Percival's confident posture faltered for a fraction of a second, and that was genuinely all the confirmation my father actually needed.
I didn't immediately call the police to the house, because I needed undeniable evidence that would hold up flawlessly inside a federal courtroom, rather than simply a guilty expression caught in the moment. I feigned interest in considering his buyout proposal, purely to buy precious time, while instructing Weldon to monitor Percival's every single move. While my uncle celebrated what he believed was our surrender, our legal team was quietly closing the net around him.
That same night, Yasmin suffered a terrifying medical emergency in her hospital room, after an unidentified intruder tampered with her IV line. Fortunately, the medical team stabilized her in time, reporting she was eight weeks pregnant, and that the baby remained entirely unharmed. Gavin stayed by her bedside the entire night, though he made clear that any hope of reconciliation would require years of intense therapy and total, complete honesty going forward.
Percival, entirely unaware of our actual progress, walked into my corner office the next afternoon wearing a fake, confident smile. "Katrina, you look exhausted," he said smoothly. "Step down and let me run the group until this whole media circus dies down properly."
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"Are you offering to save the company, Uncle Percival," I asked, looking up from my desk, "or are you simply trying to finish stealing it?"
His fake smile vanished instantly as two federal officers stepped out from my private conference room.
