Chapter 16 - Margaret’s Clue
Inside the van, Isabella found a broken pearl button.
Margaret had sewn identical pearl buttons onto Isabella’s childhood dresses.
She used to call them “little moons.”
Beneath the button was a smear of blue paint.
Isabella remembered a Fairmont property Thomas once visited.
An abandoned riverside warehouse with blue loading doors.
Police surrounded the building.
Thomas called again.
“You always were clever.”
“Let my mother go.”
“Transfer the trust.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“It will when Noah’s guardian signs.”
“You’ll never become his guardian.”
“No. Jason will.”
Isabella understood.
Thomas planned to free Jason through the conservatorship claim, then use him as Noah’s legal representative.
Three generations of control depended on declaring Isabella incapable.
“You taught Jason everything,” she said.
“I taught him ambition.”
“You taught him theft.”
Thomas laughed.
“Your mother wasted an empire pretending poverty was noble.”
“She protected employees after you robbed them.”
“She chose weakness.”
A faint sound came through the phone.
Margaret coughing.
Isabella kept him talking while police entered the warehouse from the river.
Thomas heard movement.
The call ended.
Inside, officers found Margaret tied to a chair beside gasoline containers.
Thomas had prepared to burn the building and destroy evidence.
He held a lighter in one hand and a gun in the other.
Margaret looked at Isabella through the open doorway.
“Don’t come closer.”
May you like
Thomas raised the gun.
👉 Isabella had spent years believing her father abandoned her—but now he was willing to kill her mother in front of her.
