11. Darius
DARIUS
Darius paced the length of his private home office, the quiet hum of the air conditioning doing little to soothe the restless energy that hummed beneath his skin.
He had been actively avoiding his sister for the last twenty-four hours, going so far as to park his vehicle deep inside the enclosed garage and locking the heavy bay doors to hide any physical sign of his presence.
He knew he had to speak to Isabel soon, but he preferred to stay entirely out of her radar until the high-leverage business metrics he was restructuring were finalized.
If he met up with her now, her protective instincts would take over, and she would simply try to force him to let her help carry the burden.
He was not going to allow that to happen.
Not this time. There were already far too many people tangled up in the fallout of this corporate mess, people who had possessed zero choice in the matter and had been dragged into the crossfire anyway.
He sat down at his desk, opening his laptop to log into the Wayne Group secure server.
Before his fingers could hit the keyboard, a sharp, rhythmic chime cut through the quiet room as a message binged on his personal phone.
Darius retrieved the device, tapping the screen to unlock a newly received audio file.
He pressed play, his jaw tightening as he instantly recognized the voices filtering through the speaker.
He could clearly identify Anna, Owen, Michael, Linda, Maggie, and Martin.
The acoustic echo confirmed they were gathered in a hospital waiting area, and the frantic gravity of their discussion made him freeze.
Darius listened in silent focus, absorbing every single line of the conversation regarding George Heart’s collapse, the corporate fronts, and the old academic betrayal in Charleston.
When the recording ended, he quickly forwarded the file to Clyde, typing a direct instruction into the field. Check all the details.
A second later, the screen blinked with a response. Sure thing.
Darius leaned back in his leather chair, pivoting toward the wide glass window to look out over the sunlit waters of the bay.
The sheer volume of incoming information was massive, shifting the parameters of the takeover attempt from a standard real estate acquisition into a dangerous, multi-generational vendetta.
He turned his chair back toward the desk when his phone let out a secondary ding.
He reviewed the text line, surprised by the rapid turnaround.
Are you able to talk? Clyde asked.
Darius typed a single word back. Yes.
The phone rang almost instantly. He slid his thumb across the glass screen to answer, lifting the receiver to his ear.
"What have you got for me?" Darius asked, leaning his elbow against the polished mahogany desk.
"South Coast Hotels," Clyde told him, his voice crisp and clear over the line.
"I dug past their current operational files and ran a historic trace on their early commercial ledgers.
I found out that they were aggressively looking to invest alongside your parents in the original Hearts Hotel development project forty years ago, right before your parents had a sudden change of heart and pulled the contracts from the table. "
Darius shifted in his seat, his brow furrowing. "What? Why on earth don't I know a single thing about that joint venture? I personally checked every archive and legal record connected to our family's early hospitality projects before I launched this acquisition strategy."
"You wouldn't have found a trace of it in the Wayne Group historical files," Clyde explained, the sound of computer keys tapping faintly in the background.
"Your father buried the failed negotiation details to protect the brand.
I found the transaction history inside the archived corporate records of South Coast Hotels.
Their firm was counting entirely on that specific partnership to survive, because their local accounts were not doing very well at the time.
Plus, their family dynamic was incredibly volatile back then.
Right in the middle of the project negotiations, one of the sons of the owner was slapped with a formal restraining order for harassing a woman. "
"Nice fellow," Darius drawled sarcastically, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic pattern against his desk. "What does that brother's domestic record have to do with the current legal threat against the Hearts Hotel?"
"That specific brother was pathologically harassing George Heart’s pregnant wife, Dr. Anna Caldwell," Clyde revealed, delivering the fact with a quiet, heavy focus.
"Oh," Darius said, the word escaping him in a wave of complete surprise as his posture straightened. "Who exactly was the guy?"
"Professor Hyrum Wineberg," Clyde’s words made Darius's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.
"He is Dr. Debbi Wineberg's uncle." A brief pause cleared the line before Clyde continued.
"The man is also directly associated with various land survey companies, and he acts as a senior field archaeologist for their private acquisition accounts.
Trust me, nothing he or his company surveys or values comes up valuable. "
"Yes, I gathered that much from the hospital recording I was sent," Darius told him, his mind rapidly cataloging the family names and the structural layers of the deception.
His brow furrowed deeply as the legal links tightened into a single, cohesive timeline.
"So what exactly are you trying to tell me here, Clyde?
Are the Winebergs coming after the hotel registry purely for a twisted sense of revenge? "
“People have executed a massive amount more damage for a lot less return than that," Clyde stated, the low, steady cadence of his voice carrying over the line.
"I will keep digging into their historical financial filings.
As the records stand, it seems that the Wineberg family did not only lose a vast amount of seed capital on that initial Hearts Hotel joint venture forty years ago, but the subsequent scandal actively hindered Tommy Wineberg Junior's first public run for the governor of Florida that exact same year. "
Darius's eyes shot up, his body tensing against the leather of his seat.
"Florida?" He spun his chair back around toward the wide glass window, though his gaze barely registered the sunlit bay stretching out in front of him as his mind ticked over the logistical maps.
"Are they not based entirely out of Charleston? "
"Yeah," Clyde confirmed, the soft clicking of a keyboard punctuated his words.
"Their core corporate footprint, their family estates, and their primary shell registries are all situated in South Carolina.
According to the state asset tracking systems, they don't own, invest in, or even rent a single square foot of legitimate commercial property anywhere in Florida. "
"Why?" Darius asked suddenly, his fingers gripping the edge of the mahogany desk. "They are an incredibly prominent, high-profile family in the South. Why on earth would a man attempt to run for the governor of a state where he possesses zero open commercial interests, unless..."
"Unless they still are not operating as a fully legitimate business," Clyde finished for him, his tone turning clinical.
"Florida, and especially a wealthy coastal hub like Sanibel, would serve as a magnificent territory to expand their shadow networks and set up shop under a brand-new corporate registry. "
"Yes, but why don't they own a single physical property here already?
" Darius still could not fathom the total absence of their family name from the local land records.
"They operate as an aggressive real estate developer along the Atlantic seaboard.
Can you run a deeper check on the state construction database and find out if their firms have ever executed any structural work in Florida? "
"Will do," Clyde told him. The line fell into a heavy quiet for a long moment, the only sound being the distant hum of Darius's office fan as his investigator reviewed the archived regulatory folders. "There is one very specific legal explanation for the gap in their tracking history."
"What is that?" Darius asked him, leaning closer to the phone.
"They have been slapped with a formal, state-level administrative ban prohibiting them from operating anywhere in Florida," Clyde pointed out, delivering the structural finding with a cold precision. "The current not so legitimate families that operate here have banned them.”
“Look into that,” Darius told him.
“There is also this upcoming election which is the family's secondary run for the governor's office here.
They are trying to finally break back into the Florida markets, and what better way to bypass a permanent administrative ban than to place the patriarch of the family into the highest executive seat in the state? "
Darius let out a slow whistle, the pieces of the political chessboard locking together with a sinister clarity.
"A gubernatorial override would instantly clear their regulatory record, allowing their dummy corporations to scrub the old blacklists and open the floodgates for their dark-money construction accounts. "
"Exactly," Clyde agreed. "And Sweet Blossom Bay is the ultimate prize for that type of high-stakes gamble.
Think about the layout, Darius. The entire region offers a perfect mix of geographical advantages and logistical headaches for a shady operator.
Historically, the area was part of the old Buccaneer Coast, which romanticizes the legacy of old piracy and hiding contraband in the deep mangrove channels.
But modern Sanibel is a quiet, ultra-wealthy, and conservation-heavy sanctuary.
The local real estate values are astronomical because the strict environmental protections restrict any massive commercial development. "