Chapter 18 - The Unsolved Freight Mystery
Two months after their engagement, Ren sat in her new corner office on the twenty-third floor reviewing international logistics ledgers.
It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon, and snow was falling gently outside her floor-to-ceiling glass paneling.
She opened a digital archive file containing historical acquisitions from the company’s original founding in 1998.
As she cross-referenced the original land deeds for the downtown block where Cole Logistics stood, her eyes caught a mathematical anomaly.
There was a missing parcel deed from thirty years ago—a ten-foot strip of land beneath the building’s foundation that was never officially purchased by Damian’s father.
According to the old maritime land registry, the land was held in a private, unliquidated trust registered under a shell name in Delaware.
Ren frowned, her analytical mind immediately clicking into high gear as she traced the shell company’s registration back to its origin.
The shell company hadn't been created by an outside real estate developer or a rival logistics firm.
It had been opened in 1996 by Damian’s mother—a woman who had reportedly passed away when Damian was only four years old.
Ren leaned back in her leather executive chair, her heart pounding violently against her ribs as she stared at the glowing computer screen.
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Damian’s father had spent his entire life building Cole Logistics, believing he owned every inch of the forty-one-floor glass tower.
If his mother was still alive in 1996 to register that trust deed, then the entire history of the Cole family was built on a massive, terrifying lie.
