Chapter 4 - THE NURSERY AT THE ESTATE
The nursery contained diapers, formula, legal guardianship forms, and a forged death certificate bearing my name.
Cause of death: complications from thermal burns.
Date: three days in the future.
Margaret planned my death before Luke threw the water.
If I survived long enough to give birth, the trust would activate under my son.
Then my forged will would appoint Margaret guardian and Luke trustee.
They needed the baby alive.
They did not need me.
The estate also contained clothing and photographs belonging to the first Caroline.
Margaret had preserved everything.
Not from grief.
From planning.
She used the first marriage as a model for the second.
Investigators found journals describing what worked and what failed.
ISOLATION EFFECTIVE.
CONTROL OF MEDICAL ACCESS ESSENTIAL.
PUBLIC INFERTILITY NARRATIVE SUCCESSFUL.
The final page read:
SECOND CAROLINE MORE RESISTANT. ACCELERATE BEFORE DELIVERY.
My life had been reduced to a strategy.
Then police found a locked room beneath the nursery.
Inside were financial files showing the trust was worth nearly nine hundred million dollars.
The Brooks men could manage assets but never inherit the principal.
Only a child descended from the Brooks women could.
The first Caroline and I inherited through our grandmother.
Luke married us to gain proximity.
Then killed every son who would outrank him.
But one document did not fit.
It named another current beneficiary.
MALE CHILD — AGE SIX.
There was already a surviving heir.
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Someone had hidden him from Luke.
Read Chapter 5 to discover the identity of the six-year-old boy.
