Chapter 14 - The Father Behind the Scheme
Thomas Vale had disappeared when Isabella was five.
Margaret believed he had fled abroad after stealing company funds.
The photograph proved he had returned.
Helen used private investigators to trace him.
He lived under another name in New Jersey and served as a financial consultant to Cross Hospitality.
Jason had paid him for years.
Isabella felt sick.
“My husband worked with the father who abandoned me.”
Margaret’s face went white.
“Thomas knows every weakness in the old trust.”
The investigators found emails between Thomas and Evelyn.
They had created the original plan decades earlier.
Evelyn helped Thomas move stolen money out of Fairmont accounts.
In exchange, she received information about dormant properties and trust loopholes.
When Thomas vanished, Margaret took the blame for the company’s collapse.
Evelyn built her career on the remains.
Years later, Thomas informed her that control would pass to Isabella after childbirth.
That knowledge led Evelyn to arrange Jason’s courtship.
Jason had never been the mastermind.
He was the newest generation of the same scheme.
Isabella stared at the photograph.
Thomas was smiling beside Jason.
Two men who claimed rights over her life without ever loving her.
Ramirez issued a warrant.
But Thomas’s apartment was empty.
His computer had been wiped.
On the wall, investigators found a recent photograph of Noah.
Written beneath it were four words:
May you like
THE CHILD SECURES EVERYTHING.
👉 Thomas had lost access through Isabella—but he still believed kidnapping Noah could restore the fortune.
