Chapter 10
Selene had never intended Tristan to become the permanent head of the Barrone family.
She intended him to become the man blamed for everything.
That was the major twist.
The twenty-one-day appointment had not been designed to give Tristan a future.
It had been designed to give Selene a clean exit from the past.
Investigators reconstructed the scheme from emails, financial records, drafting notes, login data, and the original engineering file.
Fourteen months earlier, Selene learned about the structural warning before the warehouse accident.
She was not responsible for maintaining the building.
But she had become heavily involved in Barrone Maritime’s legitimate operations because Lucius trusted her with administrative matters.
Closing the loading platform immediately would have disrupted a major winter shipping contract.
The company was already under pressure.
Selene made the decision to delay.
She used Tristan’s credentials to send maintenance paperwork that made the engineering company believe reinforcement work had been completed.
Her expectation was that repairs would happen quietly within days.
They did not happen fast enough.
The platform collapsed first.
Five workers were injured.
Matthew Doyle never walked again.
Selene panicked.
She continued using Tristan’s account because the initial false documents were already attached to his name.
Then she steered settlements through outside counsel and ensured Lucius received only summarized reports.
Tristan knew about the financial settlements.
He did not know about the falsified safety warning.
That was why he seemed strangely ignorant of the warehouse details.
It was why Selene—not Tristan—had entered Lucius’s office.
It was why the acting authority was temporary rather than permanent.
And it was why every unusual document required Tristan’s personal signature.
When the engineering firm finally contacted Lucius directly, Selene realized the concealment was about to fail.
She gave an outside security contractor information about Lucius’s route.
Her instructions were framed as delaying and intercepting him.
The contractor escalated the plan.
Lucius’s vehicle was forced off the mountain road.
Selene learned the car had been found wrecked and assumed he was dead.
Then she moved immediately.
Tell Willa her father was gone.
Remove the nanny who might challenge household changes.
Install Tristan as temporary representative.
Have Tristan sign the warehouse sale.
Complete the transfer.
If investigators later uncovered the altered engineering records, the false account trail, emergency sale, crest, and signatures would all point toward him.
Selene would be the grieving widow.
Tristan would be the ambitious brother who seized power after Lucius’s death and tried to dump a dangerous asset.
She had not crowned her brother.
She had dressed him for the fall.
Tristan sat across from Lucius reading the evidence.
His face slowly emptied.
“She used my account.”
“Yes.”
“She knew I’d sign.”
“Yes.”
“Because I thought I was helping her.”
Lucius stared at him.
“You were helping her.”
Tristan looked up.
Lucius’s voice remained cold.
“You just didn’t ask what you were helping her do.”
That mattered.
The twist changed Tristan’s role.
It did not erase his choices.
He had accepted Lucius’s presumed death suspiciously quickly.
Taken the crest.
Signed documents he did not understand.
May you like
And thrown a three-year-old into a freezing yard because she cried for her father.
Manipulated was not the same thing as innocent.
