Chapter 9 - CELESTE'S MONEY
Gideon did not deny it.
He sat across from me in the Blackwood library where I had once studied for college exams.
"Your mother's trust still exists."
"Why didn't I receive it?"
"Because you signed a deferral."
Another signature.
Another paper.
I felt sick.
Harrison found the document.
Dated four months after my wedding.
My signature appeared at the bottom.
I stared at it.
"I never signed this."
That one I knew.
The signature leaned too far right.
My middle initial was wrong.
Thomas notarized it.
The trust had been deferred until my forty-fifth birthday or until a "marital risk event" occurred.
A divorce counted.
Which meant the moment Julian filed, the trust activated.
Value: $640 million.
I almost laughed at the insanity of it.
I had spent years letting Julian call me broke while a fortune sat behind a forged signature.
But Harrison looked worried.
"There's more."
The trust held a controlling interest in Blackwood Residential.
One of its largest borrowers was Vance Group.
The same debt Julian claimed belonged only to his company was partly owed to me.
Rachel said, "You may be one of his largest secured creditors."
I stared at the numbers.
Then at Gideon.
"Did you know?"
"Not about the forged deferral."
"But you knew the trust could become his lender."
"Yes."
I stood.
"You all built cages with paperwork and called them protection."
My father did not argue.
That helped more than an apology would have.
I ordered an independent trustee to take control of my inheritance.
Not Gideon.
Not Harrison.
Me, through counsel.
Then the police called.
Thomas Vale had been found.
Alive.
At a private airfield.
He was trying to leave for Zurich.
He asked to speak to me before giving a statement.
When I arrived, Thomas looked twenty years older.
"Julian isn't the worst one," he said.
"Who is?"
He closed his eyes.
May you like
"Victoria."
Then he told me my mother had met Victoria Vance three weeks before she died.
