Chapter 6 - “If He Breaks, the Audit Dies With Him”
Investigators recovered deleted messages from Grant’s phone.
Most were mundane.
Travel.
Dinner.
Complaints about Silvio.
Then came the thread from three nights before the resort event.
Grant:
He’s going to remove both of us after the audit.
Lucinda:
We don’t know that.
Grant:
I do.
Then:
If he breaks, the audit dies with him.
Lucinda:
What does that mean?
Grant:
He already barely functions when anything happens to those kids.
No explicit murder plan.
Not yet.
Then the next day:
If something happened during the resort weekend, he’d walk away from the company for months.
Lucinda:
Stop.
Grant:
You know I’m right.
Hours later:
Lucinda:
There are cameras everywhere.
Grant:
Not everywhere.
That message made Silvio’s blood run cold.
They had discussed hurting him through his children.
Not because they inherited anything if Ethan and Mia died.
Not because the children held money.
Because Silvio loved them.
Grant understood that love as vulnerability.
If both children died in a horrifying accident at Silvio’s own resort, Grant believed Silvio would become emotionally incapable of running the company.
Lucinda, as his sister and senior executive, could step temporarily into greater authority.
The audit could be delayed.
Records could be challenged.
People could leave.
Contracts could disappear into restructuring.
It was not a brilliant plan.
It was desperate.
May you like
And desperation makes people confuse temporary chaos with escape.
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