Chapter 4 - THE BLUE SAFE
I read the sentence three times.
The car accident was not the first attempt.
My wife had died when a delivery truck crossed the center line on Route 9 during a storm. The driver had been drunk. He went to prison. The case was closed.
At least, I thought it was.
Detective Ortiz took the letter.
“Did your wife ever report threats?”
“Not to me.”
Tessa looked away.
I saw it.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“She reported something to a private investigator.”
I stood so fast the chair scraped across the floor.
“You knew that too?”
“Only after she died.”
Ortiz cut in. “We need the safe.”
By 1:30 a.m., police were at my house.
The blue safe was hidden behind a false panel in Amelia’s old dressing room. I had never seen it. Tessa knew the code: Noah’s birth date backward.
Inside were corporate files, a flash drive, three photographs, and a folder labeled VALE BIOLOGICS.
I knew the company.
Vivienne’s father, Malcolm Vale, owned it. Mercer Foundation had considered investing before Amelia objected.
I opened the folder.
Amelia had documented illegal clinical-trial payments, falsified safety reports, and a chain of shell companies.
At the center of the page was one name.
Mercer Pediatric Research Trust.
My trust.
Noah’s trust.
Ortiz looked at me. “How much is it worth?”
“About eighty million.”
Tessa shook her head.
“No.”
She pulled out another document.
It was an amendment signed by my grandfather years earlier.
If Mercer Foundation uncovered fraud involving a partner company, the controlling voting shares transferred to the youngest direct heir until the investigation ended.
Noah.
A one-year-old had unknowingly become the legal obstacle between Malcolm Vale and control of a fortune.
Then Ortiz’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her face hardened.
“What?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“Vivienne never made it to booking.”
My chest tightened.
“The transport car was hit two blocks from the precinct.”
“Is she alive?”
Ortiz’s expression answered before her words did.
May you like
“She’s gone.”
Then my house alarm began screaming.
