Chapter 6
Elias contacted me at dawn.
One message.
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT THE PHOTOS.
I did not go alone.
I also did not arrive with twenty men.
Compromise.
Rafe stayed outside the abandoned boathouse.
I entered.
Elias stood beside a table.
Older than I remembered.
Sharper.
He placed a phone in front of me.
Forty-three images.
Red ledger pages.
Transfers.
Names.
Dates.
Twelve million exactly.
Then the continuity list.
Seven elders.
Celeste.
Owen.
Richard Bale.
Thomas Greer.
Anthony Moretti.
Caleb Stone.
And Patrick Vale.
I knew them all.
Men my father trusted once.
Not men I trusted now.
“Why come back?” I asked.
Elias looked toward the lake.
“Because they’re using your daughter.”
Good answer.
Not revenge.
Maybe partly.
But specific.
He explained why Owen dismissed him two years earlier.
Elias discovered donor money disappearing.
Not enough evidence.
He confronted Owen privately.
Owen accused him of disloyalty and removed him.
I believed Owen.
That failure belonged to me.
“I should have heard you.”
Elias looked at me.
“You should have asked one more question.”
Fair.
He then showed me the final photograph.
A handwritten page from Celeste.
TARGET WINDOW: DONOR DINNER.
POST-VICTOR ANNOUNCEMENT WITHIN 30 DAYS.
My breathing slowed.
“How were they removing me?”
Elias hesitated.
“Not killing you.”
Again.
Everyone desperate to make that clear.
“How?”
“A family vote.”
I laughed.
“There is no family vote.”
“They created one.”
Forgery?
No.
Tradition theater.
Seven elders would publicly withdraw recognition of my authority.
Then six funded captains would refuse orders.
Enough chaos to force mediation.
Celeste would propose a temporary council “for Sadie.”
Maya would be blamed as outside influence.
I would be pressured to step down to prevent division.
Elegant.
No bullets.
No police.
No paperwork needed.
Just coordinated disobedience.
“Why attack Maya tonight?”
Elias looked sick.
“Because she saw me.”
There.
He had passed the corridor seconds before her.
Celeste feared Maya could identify the man who photographed the book.
So she demanded the guard’s name before Maya reached me.
Sadie was leverage.
May you like
Again.
Always children when adults run out of moral arguments.
