Chapter 18 - VICTORIA’S VERSION
Victoria finally agreed to a formal interview.
Not with us.
With investigators.
Her attorney later filed portions publicly, forcing Rebecca to review them.
Victoria admitted knowing about my pregnancy.
She admitted forwarding the email.
She admitted arranging the false settlement.
Not forging it, she claimed.
That was Daniel.
She admitted hiring Fulton.
She admitted the private DNA tests.
Her defense was not innocence.
It was justification.
She said Nathan was emotionally unstable after his father’s death.
She said I represented a threat to the company.
She said Charles encouraged “containment.”
She said Daniel handled the paperwork.
The hockey stick?
Self-defense.
The threat?
“I don’t remember using those words.”
Nathan heard her say it himself.
But memory became her shield.
Then came her biggest accusation.
“Nathan knew Grace was pregnant.”
I felt the floor shift.
Rebecca replayed that portion.
Victoria claimed she told Nathan in person after he returned from Chicago.
“He said he wanted nothing to do with it.”
Nathan turned pale.
“That never happened.”
“Can you prove where you were?” I asked.
“That’s not enough.”
He understood the burden.
Absence of memory was not evidence.
Victoria described the supposed conversation in Nathan’s office at 9:30 p.m. on September sixth.
Nathan checked his calendar.
Empty.
Security archives?
Four years old.
Possible.
For the first time since discovering the email interception, doubt returned.
Not that Nathan was Lily’s father.
That was settled.
Whether he had known after all.
He saw it on my face.
“You believe her.”
“I’m considering it.”
“I never knew.”
“I spent four years believing an email too.”
He stepped back.
That answer hurt him.
It needed to.
Trust rebuilt through evidence had to survive uncomfortable evidence too.
Rebecca searched.
Nathan’s building used elevator access logs.
Archived through the landlord.
September sixth.
Nathan entered at 7:42 p.m.
Left at 8:18.
Victoria entered at 8:31.
She could not have spoken to him at 9:30.
But perhaps elsewhere.
Then Rebecca found Nathan’s credit-card receipt.
Dinner with Charles at 8:47.
Restaurant camera footage long gone.
Charles confirmed it.
His calendar did too.
Reward.
Victoria’s specific story could not be true.
But the information twist was in her wording.
She knew Nathan had dinner with Charles that night.
Her archived calendar contained it.
Why choose a time she knew could be disproven?
Rebecca thought for a long moment.
“Maybe she wants us focused on whether Nathan knew.”
Instead of what?
The date.
September sixth.
Three days before the fake settlement.
Something happened that day worth hiding behind a false conversation.
Charles checked his notes.
At dinner, Victoria had called him.
She asked whether Nathan’s merger could survive “a surprise heir.”
Charles remembered because the phrase seemed strange.
Victoria knew enough to frame Lily not merely as scandal.
As inheritance.
May you like
And someone had taught her why.
📖 Victoria’s false claim that Nathan knew about the pregnancy collapsed under timeline records, but her “surprise heir” question revealed she understood Lily’s financial significance from the beginning. 👇
