Mara flipped faster.
Bellamy Maritime had been used for decades to move money through shell companies.
Bribes.
Fraud.
Blackmail.
Illegal transfers.
Harrison Bellamy had documented everything.
Then Mara reached the final pages.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Eleanor Finch.
Mara looked up.
Mrs. Finch.
The housekeeper seemed to age ten years in a second.
Thomas spoke quietly.
“Her name isn’t Finch.”
Mrs. Finch began sobbing.
Mara stared.
“What is your name?”
The woman looked at her.
“Isabel.”
Mara’s blood froze.
Thomas nodded.
“She’s my mother.”
Mara staggered backward.
The woman in the hidden portrait.
Harrison’s vanished daughter.
She had never disappeared.
She had spent decades inside her father’s house disguised as a servant.
Mrs. Finch—Isabel—covered her face.
“Harrison sent me away when Thomas was born. Years later I came back under another name. I wanted to be near him. Near what should have been his.”
Mara could hardly process it.
Her grandmother had served her own family for nearly thirty years.
But Thomas was staring at Isabel differently.
Coldly.
Mara noticed.
“Dad?”
Thomas opened the ledger to the final page.
“Tell her.”
Isabel shook her head.
“Please.”
“Tell her.”
Adrian looked between them.
“Tell her what?”
Thomas’s voice hardened.
“Who paid Charles to kill me.”
Mara looked at Isabel.
The old woman trembled.
“No.”
Mara’s heart sank.
“Grandmother?”
Isabel began crying.
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From him.”
She pointed.
Not at Adrian.
At Thomas.
Mara stopped breathing.
Thomas did not react.
Isabel whispered, “Your father didn’t come back to Blackthorn for the will.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
“Enough.”
“No.”
For the first time in decades, the quiet housekeeper straightened.
“He came back for the ledger.”
Mara looked at her father.
“Why?”
Isabel’s tears fell.
“Because Thomas discovered Harrison’s crimes. And instead of exposing them…”
She swallowed.
“He wanted to take them over.”
Thomas stepped forward.
“She’s lying.”
Isabel laughed bitterly.
“I have spent half my life lying for you. Don’t ask me to do it again.”
Mara backed away from Thomas.
Isabel continued.
“Thomas threatened Harrison. He knew every judge, every account, every politician Harrison owned. He told him he could run the network better.”
“No,” Mara whispered.
Thomas looked at her.
“Mara, listen—”
Isabel shouted.
“Your father blackmailed his own grandfather!”
Thomas grabbed her arm.
Mara moved instinctively.
She seized his wrist.
The same movement she had used on Adrian.
Thomas stared at her.
And for the first time, she saw something in her father’s eyes that she had never seen when she was a child.
Not warmth.
Calculation.
She released him slowly.
Isabel whispered, “I paid Charles to frighten him.”
Adrian stared.
“You paid my father?”
“Yes.”
“To murder Thomas?”
“No! I told him to scare Thomas away. To make him leave the country.”
Thomas laughed.
“And Charles decided killing me was easier.”
Isabel looked at Mara.
“When Thomas survived, he came here for the ledger. I refused to give it to him.”
