Chapter 2 - THE VIDEO WITHOUT THE GIFT
By morning, a video of me smashing the monkey had reached every employee at Cole Heritage Toys.
The clip began with the toy already in my hand.
It showed Josephine crying, Silas standing, and my arm striking the hearth.
It did not show Robert giving her the broken gift.
It did not include his words.
Clara’s caption called me unstable and claimed I had destroyed a rare company prototype during a family celebration.
My father suspended me before breakfast.
The email removed my building access, company accounts, and authority over product archives.
Robert called it a temporary safety measure.
I called our attorney.
Mara Sloan had been preparing documents for the meeting I had promised Robert would happen that day. She listened as I described the toy and its label.
“Do not tell the family what you found.”
“I already threatened them.”
“You told them something would happen tomorrow. You did not tell them what you know.”
“What do I know?”
“Only that the toy may have belonged to Anna.”
Josephine sat at the hotel desk drawing a Christmas tree with no gifts beneath it.
I lowered my voice.
“Can we still proceed?”
“Yes. The independent audit notice was delivered at eight.”
That had been my promised gift.
For three months, I had gathered irregular invoices, missing design files, and unexplained payments from the safety reserve Anna created before her death.
I did not yet know what connected them.
The audit would preserve company records before Robert could remove more.
At nine fifteen, Cole Heritage’s servers went offline.
Robert blamed a winter power failure.
The local utility reported no outage.
Silas called from a borrowed phone.
“They are clearing Anna’s old lab.”
“Who?”
“Clara and two warehouse men.”
“Stop them.”
“I tried. Dad says the audit notice is fraudulent.”
“It came through the board.”
“Three directors resigned this morning.”
Robert had forced a majority change before the audit team arrived.
Then Silas told me something worse.
The broken pieces were gone.
Clara had gathered them from the hearth and locked them inside Robert’s study.
Only one fragment remained beneath the sofa.
Silas had taken it.
A small part of the monkey’s foot.
The scratched code continued past Anna’s initials.
A.C. — 001 — MASTER.
Anna had not labeled ordinary toys that way.
She used MASTER only for final prototypes carrying approved design records.
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The family had handed Josephine a damaged version of her mother’s last authenticated work.
And the moment I broke it, they began destroying the archive that could explain why.
