Chapter 17 - THE WEAPON IN HER TRUNK
Police obtained the mansion’s exterior footage.
Victoria’s car arrived at 6:41 p.m.
She opened the trunk.
Removed the hockey stick.
Walked inside.
No game.
No sports bag.
No plausible innocent reason.
The stick belonged to Nathan.
An old college keepsake displayed in his gym.
Except it had disappeared weeks earlier.
Nathan had assumed staff moved it.
Fulton surveillance logs showed Victoria photographed the stick one month before the attack.
Rebecca did not speculate.
The prosecutor handling the assault investigation did not either.
Planning matters.
Evidence matters more.
Victoria’s attorney argued she brought it to return it.
Then why had she stored Nathan’s property in her trunk for weeks?
No answer.
The assault charge became more serious.
Still, no one promised conviction.
I appreciated that.
For months, I had been surrounded by people who acted as if wealth could turn possibility into certainty.
Rebecca never did.
Nathan and I formally signed a temporary parenting agreement.
Gradual contact.
No custody battle.
No media announcements.
Nathan began seeing Lily three afternoons a week.
The first time he picked her up from preschool, she ran toward him.
“Dad Nathan!”
He laughed.
“That’s a new one.”
“I made it.”
“I like it.”
My heart did something complicated.
Love does not always return as romance.
Sometimes it returns as watching someone kneel to zip your child’s coat correctly.
I still did not trust Nathan completely.
Not because he had known.
Because he was used to power.
And people used to power sometimes mistake generosity for permission.
He proved me right two days later.
Without asking, he paid the remaining balance on Lily’s preschool.
I found out through the billing portal.
I was furious.
“You don’t get to make financial decisions about her without me.”
“I’m her father.”
“Yes. Not her owner.”
He stopped.
“I was trying to help.”
“Ask.”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
Small mistake.
Small repair.
Important.
Meanwhile, Daniel Hayes’s role deepened.
The original archive showed he billed Victoria for “risk resolution consultations” every year since Lily’s birth.
One memo read:
Minor reaches school visibility threshold—reassess exposure.
He had been watching Lily become old enough to talk.
Old enough to resemble Nathan publicly.
Old enough to ask questions.
Then Rebecca found an email sent one week before my hiring.
Daniel to Victoria:
If GM confirms paternity, wedding cannot proceed safely.
Victoria replied:
Then she cannot confirm it.
At first we read that as legal strategy.
After the hockey stick, it sounded darker.
But one final line complicated it.
Daniel responded:
I mean buy her out, Victoria. Nothing else.
Daniel was corrupt.
He forged documents.
He threatened me.
May you like
But this suggested even he had drawn a line Victoria later crossed alone.
📖 Evidence showed Victoria planned the encounter and brought the weapon herself, while Daniel’s warning suggested the kitchen attack may have exceeded even her brother’s conspiracy. 👇
