_Author’s POV_
The Ashthorne Group’s account records went back forty years.
Rowena had been working through them in sections, starting with the most recent and moving backward, building a picture of what the family’s finances actually looked like versus what Alice had allowed everyone to see. Celeste’s lawyers were handling the forensic layer, the tracing of specific transfers, the mapping of recipient accounts, but Rowena had insisted on reading the raw records herself. She needed to understand the shape of it, not just the conclusions.
By the fourth day, the shape was becoming clear.
Seven shops. All of them Ashthorne-owned, all of them listed in the family’s commercial portfolio as standard tenanted properties generating modest rental income.
On paper, they were unremar
