Chapter 7 - THE WEDDING WAS ONLY STEP ONE
The policy was for eighty million dollars.
But the money was not what scared Adrian.
The effective date was Monday.
Two days after the wedding.
“Coincidence?” he asked.
Detective Ortiz shook her head. “I stopped believing in those this morning.”
Elise studied the trust amendment.
“Charles wanted control of the company.”
“And Victoria wanted everything else,” Adrian said.
Clara was coloring at the far end of the hospital suite when she suddenly stopped.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Miss Bell said a man was coming Monday to take Mia somewhere warm.”
The adults went still.
“What man?”
“She called him Mr. Charles.”
Ortiz swore under her breath.
They found Miss Bell three hours later.
Her real name was Margaret Bellamy, a retired nurse living in a blue cottage outside Gloucester. She had been paid through a shell company connected to Charles.
When police knocked, nobody answered.
The back door was open.
Inside, the kitchen table was still set for tea.
A chair lay overturned.
There was blood on the floor.
Clara’s drawings covered the refrigerator: a house, the ocean, a woman with yellow hair labeled MOMMY, a tall man labeled DADDY.
In the bedroom, Marcus found dozens of prepaid phones and a locked metal box.
The box contained passports for Clara and Mia under new names.
Destination: Cayman Islands.
Departure date: Monday.
Then Ortiz called from the basement.
They found Margaret alive, bound behind the furnace.
Her first words were not about herself.
“They took the ledger.”
“What ledger?” Adrian asked.
“The one Elise gave me before they took her away.”
May you like
Margaret began shaking.
“It proves who ordered the crash.”
