From Valet to billionaire king

The truth behind his death

Edmund sat down hard on the wet curb because his legs no longer felt like they belonged to him.

"What?" The word came out smaller than he meant it to.

"Reginald." Percival's voice cracked on the name. "Last night. In his sleep, at the house in Newport. The housekeeper found him this morning. I've spent the whole day with the coroner, the lawyers, the board. I should have called you sooner, I know that, I just didn't know how, and I still don't, but you needed to hear it from me before anyone else."

Edmund stared at the wet pavement between his shoes, rain running down the back of his collar. The ache in his chest was so large and shapeless he couldn't tell which part of it belonged to his father and which part belonged to the sound of Rosalind's voice through a locked door twenty minutes ago.

"I can't." His voice broke. "Uncle Percival, I can't do this right now. Rosalind's father just had two men throw me out of his house. He's forcing a divorce, trying to marry her off to some private equity heir like she's a merger, and I don't even know if she's safe in there, and you're telling me my father."

"Wait." Percival's voice sharpened, alarm cutting through the grief in it. "Someone put hands on you? Tonight?"

"Physically escorted me out, yes." Edmund pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. "I don't know what to do. I can't just leave her there."

"Edmund, listen to me, because this matters more than you understand right now." Percival's voice had gone strange, urgent in a different register, careful, as if choosing each word for weight rather than speed. "Your father's will was read this afternoon in front of the full board. He left you forty one percent of Thorne Global Holdings. Voting shares. Controlling interest in the company."

Edmund went very still. "That's not possible. He hadn't spoken to me in three years. Not once."

"I know. I don't fully understand it myself, except that he kept a file on you. Where you were living. That you'd married. Nothing invasive, nothing he ever acted on. Just watching, from a distance, the whole time. His lawyer says he updated the will eight months ago." Percival's breath came ragged over the line. "Eight months ago, Edmund, he chose you. Not the board. Not me. You. And you need to hear the rest too, because it matters tonight specifically. There is a board meeting Thursday to formally ratify that will, and there are people already circling who would like nothing better than to prove you unfit to claim it. People who might already know exactly what is happening to you right now, given the company your father in law seems to be keeping."

Something cold moved through Edmund's chest.

"Cornelius Marston," he said.

A pause. "How do you know that name?"

"Because his best friend's son is sitting in Barnaby Whitfield's dining room right now," Edmund said slowly, the pieces arranging into something he didn't want to look at directly, "and he just watched two men throw me out of the house so he could take my wife instead."

The line was quiet a long moment.

"Edmund," Percival said finally, low, "I don't think that's a coincidence. I think you need to come to the house tonight. Now. There is a great deal I need to tell you, and very little time before Thursday. After what you've just told me, I don't think Thursday is the only thing we need to worry about."

Edmund sat on the curb a moment longer, rain soaking through his jacket, staring back at the dark windows of a house he couldn't get back into, a wife he couldn't reach, and a name, his own, that had just become worth more than he ever wanted it to be, at the exact moment he had nothing left to bring to a fight with it.

"I'm coming," he said. "But Uncle Percival, I'm not walking away from Rosalind. Whatever this company means, I need her back. That comes first."

"I understand," Percival said. "Come to the house. We'll figure out both."

Edmund hung up, stood on legs that still didn't feel steady, and looked back once more at the Whitfield house, dark, silent, locked against him, before turning and walking into the rain alone.

***

Rosalind heard the front door close behind Edmund and felt something in her chest cave inward, like a wall giving way all at once.

"Let me go to him." She pulled against her mother's grip on her wrist, but Cordelia held on, and Rosalind was too shaken, too exhausted, to fight the way she wanted to. "Mom, please, let go of me."

"You are not going anywhere tonight," Cordelia said, steering her toward the stairs. "Not like this. Not hysterical."

"I am not hysterical, I am your daughter, and you just watched two strange men drag my husband out of our own family's house." Rosalind's voice cracked. "How could you just stand there? How could either of you?"

"We did what needed doing," Barnaby said from behind them, following up the stairs, his voice already returning to its usual cold composure now that the room had emptied. "You will thank us for this eventually, Rosalind, the same way Aldous said. Right now you are too upset to see it clearly."

"I will never thank you for this." Rosalind wrenched free at the top of the stairs and turned to face them both, tears streaming, her whole body shaking. "I want my phone. I want to call Edmund."

"Your phone stays with me tonight," Barnaby said, holding out his hand, and something in his flat, expectant patience told Rosalind he would simply take it from her if she refused.

She handed it over. She hated herself a little for how quickly her hand moved, the old habit of obeying him faster than she could think to resist.

The door to her childhood bedroom closed a few minutes later, and Rosalind heard the unmistakable click of a key turning from the outside.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at nothing, replaying the whole night in pieces that refused to fit together in any order that made sense. The folder. The men in the doorway. Edmund's face as they pulled him toward the hall.