Chapter 13 - THE SAFE HOUSE
For forty-eight hours Margaret and Victor vanished. Police searched every family property Ethan could name. Nothing.
Then Claire remembered a house no one had mentioned in years.
Their father had owned a hunting cottage under a holding company near Lake Mercer.
After Charles died, Margaret claimed it had been sold.
Property records told a different story.
The company still owned it.
Police surrounded the cottage before sunrise.
They found Victor alone in the kitchen with a half-packed suitcase and a bottle of bourbon.
Margaret was gone.
Victor demanded a lawyer.
Then Ruiz placed photographs of the forged documents on the table.
"Your office. Your files. Your notarizations. Your shell company."
Victor's confidence cracked.
"Margaret said no one would get hurt."
Ruiz stared at him. "Ava Hale was drugged for months."
"That wasn't my part."
"Then tell me your part."
Victor asked for immunity.
He didn't get it.
He did get the chance to cooperate.
By noon, he was talking.
Margaret's plan had started with money, but not Ava's money.
After Charles died, auditors nearly discovered that Margaret had diverted more than two million dollars from the Hale Foundation into private accounts.
Charles had found out.
He planned to remove her from every board and report the transfers.
Then he died.
Years later, Ava sold her company and announced she would create an independent charitable fund.
She hired a forensic accountant.
That accountant began reviewing organizations Ava planned to support—including the Hale Foundation.
"Ava wasn't the target because Margaret wanted seventeen million dollars," Victor said.
Ethan leaned forward.
"Then why?"
Victor swallowed.
"Because Ava was about to uncover what happened to the first two million."
Ruiz asked, "And the crash?"
Victor looked at the floor.
"Margaret said she'd handled this kind of problem before."
Ethan went still.
"My father."
Victor didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Then his lawyer whispered in his ear.
Victor looked up again.
"There's one place Margaret might go."
He named a private rehabilitation center three counties away.
Ava knew the name immediately.
May you like
It was the facility Margaret had been trying to transfer her into for months.
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