Chapter 5 - The Test Helena Couldn’t Alter
The hospital had strict procedures.
Helena could not legally order a test on Sophie without proper authorization.
So she used a private investigator.
A discarded cup.
A hairbrush from Nora’s bag.
Then she obtained material believed to belong to Roman from an old personal item stored at the mansion.
A private laboratory ran the comparison.
The result matched the original.
Roman was Sophie’s father.
Again.
Helena now had two genuine tests proving it.
The first test she forged.
The second she buried.
Vincent kept a copy.
Why?
Because by then he no longer trusted Helena.
The financial theft had grown.
What began as redirected support payments expanded into trust manipulation.
Helena borrowed against family-controlled assets.
She pledged shares she did not fully own.
She funded private investments through shell companies.
If Sophie’s beneficiary status remained valid, independent trustees would eventually discover the irregularities.
Helena needed Sophie legally removed before the next mandatory audit.
The audit was scheduled in three weeks.
That created the deadline.
The gala was not merely humiliation.
It was meant to provoke a final confrontation.
Helena had invited several trustees.
Family attorneys.
Business partners.
Witnesses.
She wanted Sophie to appear disruptive.
Nora desperate.
Roman absent.
Then she planned to announce that a woman falsely claiming connection to the D’Angelo family had invaded the gala with a child proven not to be Roman’s.
Security would remove them publicly.
The trustees would see chaos.
Helena would then file the forged paternity evidence.
Except Roman came home.
Everything collapsed.
Now Roman knew why Helena’s face turned pale when Sophie called him Dad.
The child she had spent three years declaring illegitimate had recognized him instantly.
Roman’s investigators reviewed the second DNA report.
Certified.
Verifiable.
Impossible to explain away.
Then the trust attorney found another document.
A draft petition.
Helena intended to ask the court for a declaration that Sophie had no rights under the D’Angelo family trust.
Attached was the forged DNA test.
A sworn affidavit from Vincent.
And a second statement supposedly from Nora.
Roman stared at Nora’s signature.
Nora had never signed it.
Another forgery.
Vincent admitted Helena planned to file after the gala.
Once the petition became public, the humiliation would create enough confusion for Helena to freeze Sophie’s beneficiary rights during litigation.
Time was all Helena needed.
The audit could be delayed.
Assets moved.
Evidence buried.
But investigators discovered one problem Helena had not anticipated.
The trust’s original attorney had died the previous year.
Before his death, he placed a sealed compliance file with an independent firm.
That file contained a letter from Roman’s father.
Written before Sophie was born.
It contained instructions specifically limiting Helena’s power.
Roman had never seen it.
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Helena clearly had.
Because she had tried repeatedly to have it destroyed.
