Chapter 7 - Elias Vale’s Last Warning
The wedding was canceled.
Daphne changed out of her gown and stayed.
That surprised Maren.
“I want to hear this,” she told Adrian.
Celestine was under guard at the hospital.
Detective Monroe joined them in the library.
Harold finally opened Elias Vale’s envelope.
Inside was a letter.
Adrian recognized his grandfather’s handwriting immediately.
Harold read aloud.
Adrian,
If you are hearing this with Maren present, then I failed to repair something before my death.
The test you relied upon three years ago was compromised.
Adrian shut his eyes.
Maren watched his hands curl against the table.
Harold continued.
I believe Celestine arranged the substitution of the child’s biological sample and later financed false evidence intended to separate you from Maren Hart.
Daphne inhaled sharply.
Adrian whispered, “No.”
Harold placed the independent DNA report in front of him.
“Read it.”
Adrian did.
His eyes stopped on the conclusion.
He looked toward Elodie, who was asleep on a sofa in the adjoining room with a police victim advocate nearby.
“She’s mine.”
Maren finally let herself say it.
“She always was.”
Adrian started crying.
Quietly.
No dramatic collapse.
No excuses.
Just tears he seemed ashamed to wipe away.
“I left her.”
“Yes.”
“I left both of you.”
“Yes.”
Daphne looked at him with painful sympathy.
But Harold wasn’t finished.
Elias’s letter explained the codicil.
Elodie inherited eighteen percent of Vale Maritime.
Combined with shares Elias had placed in a protected trust, those votes were enough to block Celestine from taking control.
Maren, as Elodie’s legal guardian, would exercise those voting rights until adulthood unless a court ordered otherwise.
Detective Monroe asked the obvious question.
“How much is eighteen percent worth?”
Harold answered.
“At current valuation? Roughly one hundred and forty million dollars.”
Silence.
Maren felt nauseated.
She had spent three years working late nights to pay preschool tuition.
Celestine had tried to erase Elodie over money the child did not even know existed.
Harold slid another folder forward.
“There is also evidence of approximately twelve million dollars in unexplained transfers from subsidiaries Celestine supervised.”
Adrian looked up sharply.
“Embezzlement?”
“Potentially.”
“And if Elodie’s shares become active?”
“Her guardian gains access to corporate audits.”
Maren understood.
“So Celestine wasn’t only protecting her inheritance.”
Harold nodded.
“She was protecting herself.”
Detective Monroe closed the folder.
“Then today wasn’t spontaneous.”
“No,” Maren said.
“It was cleanup.”
A phone began vibrating on the table.
Adrian’s.
A message from the hospital.
Celestine wanted to speak with him privately.
No police.
No lawyers.
Only her brother.
Adrian stared at the screen.
Maren knew that look.
It was the same look he had worn three years earlier when Celestine handed him the fake DNA test.
Confusion.
Pain.
Hope that perhaps his sister could explain the impossible.
Maren stood.
“If you go, remember what you saw on that video.”
Adrian looked at sleeping Elodie.
May you like
This time, his answer came without hesitation.
“I will.”
