Part 4

“Why are you so worried about what I’ll find?”

“Unbelievable.”

“He wanted you to read this after you’d seen the file, not before.”

“Don’t take this as a reward. Money only helps people as long as whoever’s holding it remembers who it’s for. I couldn’t tell you this to your face. If your father and brother knew, they’d have dragged you through court for years.

“If anyone’s reached into this trust, don’t go hunting for revenge. Go hunting for the truth and let it do the rest.”

“Grandpa.”

“Preston says you’ve been asking about the land. Come to the house tonight. We settle this privately before you do something none of us can undo.”

“I’ll come. I’m not signing anything.”

“You have no idea what you’re walking into.”

“You actually came.”

“Carrington told Brightwater the hold was placed on your instruction as the trust overseer. So this is straightforward. You lift the hold and confirm the trust has no claim on the Hollow Creek land. You confirm you have no claim on the company, and the sale stays confidential. And on closing day, I pay you two million dollars. You sign tonight, the bank lifts the hold tomorrow, and we close next week.”

“Two million dollars? That’s a million times what Grandpa thought you were worth.”

“You walked out of that room yesterday with six million dollars. Why do you need this land so badly?”

“It’s dead land, Ray. It’s been sitting there doing nothing for forty years. You don’t understand how business works.”

“That program never even started. It was an old man’s dream.”

“He spent eight years on it.”

“You weren’t here, Ray. You don’t know what he was like at the end.”