Chapter 61: The Year Everything Changed

Richard’s last words left the room quiet for a moment.

"Your mother wanted to rule the country herself, not share her power with the other families."

Damon watched him, waiting for him to continue.

The revelation didn’t surprise him as much as it should have.

Someone who wanted to bring an organization like Eclipse Concord under her control would need more than ambition, and the Thorne family’s medicinal inheritance had given his mother an advantage few others could match.

What he still didn’t understand was how far she had gone to achieve her goal.

Richard seemed to understand the question on his mind.

"She wasn’t content with the position the Thornes already held. Your family was one of the founding pillars of Eclipse Concord, with influence that most families could only hope to obtain.

But your mother believed the restrictions placed on the inheritance were holding her back.

She thought the Thornes possessed something powerful enough to change the country, and she had no intention of allowing the other families to decide how that power should be used."

Vivian looked at her father with a troubled expression. She had known that Damon’s family was important, but the picture Richard was painting was very different from the respectable legacy she had imagined.

This wasn’t simply a powerful woman defending her family’s interests. According to Richard, she had wanted to place the other families beneath her.

"Did the committee know what she was planning?" Damon asked.

"They knew her ambitions were growing, and they were becoming increasingly concerned about what that meant for the existing balance.

Your mother had tightened control over the medicinal formula, and the other families were finding it harder to obtain the benefits they had once expected from the Thornes.

The more control she gained over that inheritance, the more leverage she had over everyone who depended on it."

Damon leaned back slightly, considering the implications.

If Richard’s account was accurate, his mother hadn’t merely been pushing against the committee’s restrictions.

She had been building a position from which she could eventually dictate terms to the other families.

That would explain why they feared her growing influence, although it still didn’t establish what any of them had done about it.

"What happened when she got that close?" he asked.

Richard’s expression changed. The confidence with which he had explained the committee’s structure gave way to something more difficult to conceal.

"Four years ago, everything changed."

He didn’t rush to fill the silence that followed. Catherine, who had listened without interrupting, lowered her gaze briefly, while Vivian sat a little straighter beside Damon.

"Your parents disappeared," Richard continued.

"Your mother and father both vanished, and they weren’t the only ones. Several important people connected to the Thornes and Eclipse Concord disappeared around the same time.

Some were figures whose positions had made them central to the committee’s affairs.

Others were people whose importance wasn’t always obvious to the public, but whose absence was felt by those who understood how the organization worked."

Damon’s attention sharpened.

He had known his parents were missing, but several influential people disappearing alongside them suggested that something much larger had happened.

"Were they all connected to my mother?" he asked.

"I can’t tell you that with certainty," Richard replied.

"They were connected to the same wider circle of people, but that doesn’t prove they all disappeared for the same reason.

We never received a complete explanation of what happened, and the information that reached the other families was far from enough to establish the truth."

He made no attempt to turn uncertainty into an accusation. Richard had his suspicions, but he wasn’t going to pretend that the Ashfords knew more than they did.

"There was something else, too," he continued after a moment. "Around that same period, people began dying."

Vivian’s expression tightened. "What do you mean, people began dying?"

"The deaths started around the time of the disappearances. At first, it was difficult to know whether there was any connection. People die for different reasons, and a few incidents don’t necessarily point to anything larger. But the deaths continued, and they never really stopped."

Richard’s voice remained steady, though the weight of the subject was evident in his expression.

"It’s been four years, and people are still dying under circumstances that leave questions unanswered. We haven’t established whether those deaths are connected to your parents or the others who disappeared, but the timing makes it difficult to dismiss them as coincidence."

The room fell quiet again.

Vivian looked unsettled. She had grown up knowing that powerful families operated behind the scenes, but this was no longer a discussion about inheritance, industry, or political influence.

Her father was describing something that had continued to take lives for four years, with no clear explanation and no resolution in sight.

"Has anyone managed to establish a connection between the disappearances and the deaths?" Damon asked.

"Not one I can confidently tell you is true," Richard answered.

"There have been suspicions, and people have tried to make sense of the events, but suspicion isn’t evidence.

The same applies to your mother. Her ambition gave the other families reasons to fear what she might do, but that doesn’t tell us what actually happened to her, your father, or the others who vanished."

Damon pondered for a moment.

The timing was suspicious, but it wasn’t proof of a single cause.

His mother might have made enemies through her ambition, or the disappearances might have been connected to something neither Richard nor the Ashfords understood.

He couldn’t decide between those possibilities without knowing more.

There was also the question of why the deaths had continued for four years. If they were connected to the struggle surrounding Eclipse Concord, someone had either failed to resolve the conflict or had a reason to keep it going.

If they weren’t connected, then the disappearances and the deaths represented two separate mysteries unfolding at nearly the same time.

Neither possibility gave him much to work with, but both were worth remembering.

He had come to the Ashfords hoping to learn something about his parents. Instead, he had learned that their disappearance was part of a mystery involving other missing people and four years of unexplained deaths.

His mother’s ambition might explain the tensions surrounding the Thorne family, but it didn’t explain what had happened to any of them.

Whatever had happened four years ago, its consequences had never ended.