“Ms. Emma Hayes?” a calm voice said. “This is David Lin from Lin & McCallister Law. I’m calling about your great-uncle, Charles Whitmore.”
The name hit me like a ghost. I hadn’t heard it since childhood — the mysterious uncle my parents never spoke of, the one who had built a vast company but distanced himself from the family decades ago.
I almost dropped the phone. “There must be a mistake,” I stammered.
“No mistake,” he replied. “Mr. Whitmore left you his entire estate — including Whitmore Industries.”
“The energy company?” I whispered.
“The very one. You now control a multi-billion-dollar corporation.”
The courthouse walls seemed to tilt around me. Only moments earlier, I’d been a woman mocked for wearing secondhand clothes. Now, I was being told I owned an empire.
And just like that, my story began again.
The Will — And the Challenge
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