10. Owen #3
“Like Linda said,” Maggie stated, her expression turning grim. “Insane.” She paused a beat, her gaze shifting to lock onto the younger archaeologist. “It is significantly worse for our current situation now that you're here on the island as well.”
Owen closed his eyes for a brief second, a wave of old exhaustion washing over his mind. Did he truly want to get into the ugly, bleeding details of his own past history now, or ever?
“What exactly does Anna mean by that?” Linda asked him, her features clouding with a deep, searching concern.
“Owen, buddy, I think it is time to lay it all out,” Martin told him.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees as he offered a steady look.
“It was fine for you to protect your privacy when your past was sitting miles away in Charleston.
But the shadow has finally caught up with you on this beach.
If this multi-generational takeover is about a pathologically jealous obsession topped with corporate greed, we need to know the parameters.
Because let's face it, that specific family does absolutely nothing, not even a personal vendetta, without structuring it to profit their private accounts.”
“That's not just insane,” Maggie let out a low whistle, shaking her head. “That is thoroughly and utterly nuts.”
“Is this about what happened ten years ago?” Linda asked, her brow tightly knit as she watched his expression.
“Yes,” Owen said, forcing his eyes open as he faced the room. “But there is a critical element about that entire disaster that I left out when we first discussed my move to the bay.”
“Give us the quick, summarized version of the timeline from ten years ago,” Maggie suggested gently, trying to ease the sudden spike in atmospheric pressure.
“I was married to a woman, a formal arranged marriage orchestrated by our families,” Owen told them, his jaw tightening as the bitter memories surfaced.
“I didn't think anything of it at the time.
I had always been entirely driven by my academic goals, and I grew up with ice-cold parents who treated domestic relationships like corporate mergers, so I didn't really believe in the concept of love.”
“No way!” Maggie teased him softly, a small, playful smile touching her lips as she tried to lighten the heavy mood of the waiting alcove. “Not you, Owen. I thought you were a secret romantic.”
“Funny,” Owen said, a faint, dry smile crossing his face before vanishing.
“Then I met Gill. Well, I had known her superficially because we had attended the same university years prior, but at the time of the project, I was lecturing at the college. Her father happened to be the serving dean of the scientific department.”
“I was the one who placed them on that specific research project together,” Anna told them, her voice filled with a quiet, tragic pride. “It was a high-profile, state-funded coastal survey excavation tracking early trade networks along the Atlantic seaboard.”
“It wasn't long before we just clicked,” Owen told them, his gaze drifting back toward his boots.
“The connection was fast, and I fell for her completely. But we never so much as held hands or crossed a professional boundary, because I was trapped in that miserable marriage and she was already engaged to be married to someone else.”
“Owen's wife flew into a pathologically jealous rage and systematically ruined the entire preservation project,” Linda continued for him, her voice dropping as she recalled the university gossip from back then. “She was obsessed with controlling his life.”
“Is there a secondary word for obsessed?” Anna said, her features twisting into an expression of intense disgust. “That woman was far more than obsessed; her behavioral patterns were pathologically destructive.”
“She and her uncle Hyrum came at us with every single weapon they possessed in the academic system,” Owen told them, his hands tightening into fists against his knees.
“They systematically discredited Gill's professional standing. They set her up by salting her excavation squares with stolen museum artifacts to manufacture a fraudulent data claim, and they ran an anonymous peer-review smear campaign charging her with plagiarism on her unpublished doctoral papers.”
“They utterly destroyed her career,” Linda said, her voice hoarse with old anger.
“She was a brilliant, meticulous scientist,” Anna stated, her eyes misting over. “Her father, the dean, and I were old friends, and Hyrum had always carried a bitter, toxic jealousy toward his institutional achievements.”
“Let me guess,” Michael said, his voice cutting through the space as he stepped back into the waiting alcove from his phone call. “Hyrum went after the dean’s administrative position as well?”
“Oh, yes,” Anna nodded, her jaw locking.
“They engineered a manufactured institutional financial scandal, fabricating a series of fraudulent audits regarding the misallocation of departmental research grants. They leaked the fake data to the Board of Trustees to force his immediate administrative suspension, attempting to blackmail him into joining their illicit team of contract treasure hunters, because he was a brilliant maritime archaeologist before he ever took the dean’s seat. ”
“Is that the real reason you are hiding out here in Sweet Blossom Bay?” Maggie asked Owen, her eyes filled with a deep, protective sympathy. “Because they managed to tank your academic career along with theirs?”
“No,” Owen said, shaking his head. “They didn't dare touch my professional credentials. My family possesses significantly more political and financial leverage than the Winebergs could ever hope to muster. But my parents thoroughly dislike messy public situations. What happened to Gill and her father was messy, so my family flatly refused to use their capital to help clear their names. They simply allowed me to secure a swift, quiet divorce.”
“How remarkably nice of them,” Maggie drawled sarcastically, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.
“And your wife during that disaster was Dr. Debbi Wineberg, right?” Michael clarified, his legal mind locking onto the primary connections.
“Yes,” Owen said, a deep wave of lingering shame warming his neck as he made the admission.
“Was Gill's fiancé's family also a powerful entity in the state circles?” Maggie asked.
“She was engaged to Thompson Wineberg, Debbi’s older brother,” Owen revealed, the final truth dropping like a lead weight into the center of the room. “The exact same man who is currently serving as the frontrunner for the upcoming gubernatorial race in Florida.”
“No freaking way!” Linda hissed, her hands flying up to press against her cheeks. “You never told me that piece of the connection.”
“Oh, good grief,” Maggie said in total disbelief, her shoulders dropping as she looked around the circle. “The three of you... Anna, George, and Owen managed to anger an entire family of multi-generational megalomaniacs.”
“And it looks like they are coming to the bay for blood,” Michael told them, his expression turning entirely serious as he raised his legal notepad.
“Owen's structural hunch was right. According to the preliminary asset trace my investigator just pulled from the state registry, South Coast Holdings serves as the primary umbrella holding company for each of the secondary South Coast firms Owen just mentioned. They are completely linked, and they are using that front to seize this hotel.”