Chapter 9
Tristan’s email account had been accessed from two devices around the time the false maintenance records were sent.
One was Tristan’s laptop.
The other belonged to Selene.
That did not clear him.
Spouses and relatives shared devices.
Passwords traveled inside family offices.
But investigators found a second detail.
Tristan had been in Miami on the exact afternoon the fabricated maintenance package was uploaded.
Airline records.
Hotel cameras.
A conference appearance.
He could not have been sitting at Selene’s estate office computer in Illinois.
Lucius looked at the timeline.
Fourteen months ago, false maintenance records left Tristan’s account.
The engineering warning disappeared.
The platform collapsed.
Workers were injured.
Settlements followed.
Then, shortly before Lucius’s crash, the engineering firm contacted him directly.
Someone apparently realized he had never seen Version A.
Lucius disappeared the next night.
Afterward Selene entered his office.
Then she arranged Tristan’s temporary authority.
Then Tristan was pushed to sell the warehouse before Lucius could return.
Everything pointed toward Selene.
Too neatly.
Lucius had survived too many conspiracies to trust neatness.
He asked investigators one question.
“Who benefits if every document ends with Tristan?”
The forensic accountant looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“The false engineering package came from his account.”
“Yes.”
“The warehouse sale was signed by him.”
“Yes.”
“The emergency appointment makes him personally certify every decision.”
“Yes.”
“The crest puts him publicly in charge.”
The accountant became quiet.
Lucius continued.
“If I stay dead and this gets discovered later, who does the paper say was running everything?”
“Tristan.”
There it was.
Lucius felt the shape of the story change.
He returned to the twenty-one-day emergency authority agreement.
One clause had seemed unusually specific.
The acting representative personally acknowledged responsibility for all extraordinary transactions approved during the emergency term.
Lucius had assumed it was ordinary legal caution.
Now he wondered who insisted on it.
His attorneys found the drafting emails.
The outside lawyer originally proposed ordinary corporate language.
Selene requested the personal-certification paragraph herself.
And she wrote one sentence beneath it:
I want there to be no ambiguity about who is responsible.
Lucius stared at those words for a long time.
The next morning, he asked Tristan to meet him with both attorneys present.
“You weren’t being crowned,” Lucius said.
Tristan looked confused.
May you like
Lucius slid the document across the table.
“You were being prepared.”
