Chapter 5 - The Shadows of the PastWhen Daniel returned and found me staring blankly at the forged documents, his heart broke. I explained Julian Vance’s visit, and for the first time, I saw doubt in Daniel’s eyes.
"My mother is a monster," Daniel whispered, burying his face in his hands. "She knows your father was your hero. She knows he’s not here to defend himself. Claire, maybe we should just take the babies and leave. We don't need the trust money. We can start over somewhere where they can never find us."
I looked at my husband. He was willing to give up his birthright, his wealth, and his legacy just to protect my father’s memory and our safety. I loved him deeper in that moment than I ever had before. But running away wasn't in my DNA.
"No," I said, my voice hardening. "If we run, she wins. And she will never stop hunting us. She will always hold this over our heads. We don't run, Daniel. We counter-sue, and we dig deeper."
"But how do we disprove the forgery about your father?" Daniel asked. "It takes months to run forensic audits on old shipping manifests."
"We don't need to disprove it to the public," I said, a spark of inspiration hitting me. "We just need to find the person who actually forged it. Julian Vance didn't create these documents himself; he’s a lawyer, not a counterfeiter. He uses a specific network."
I called my closest friend from law school, Marcus, who specialized in white-collar criminal defense and had deep connections in the city’s underground legal networks. Within forty-eight hours, Marcus found the leak.
"The documents were forged by a disgraced former paralegal named Thomas Wright," Marcus told me over a secure video call. "Vivian’s team paid him half a million dollars to fabricate the shipping manifests using your father's old company templates. But Wright is smart—he kept the original digital assets and the email exchange with Julian Vance as insurance in case Vivian tried to burn him."
"Where is Wright now?" I asked.
"He’s hiding out at a private estate in upstate New York, paid for by Vivian," Marcus said. "But he’s terrified. He knows that once the trial starts, he’s the liability."
Daniel stood up. "I'm going upstate."
"Daniel, it's dangerous," I warned.
"Not as dangerous as what they did to you and our babies," Daniel said, his eyes flashing with a fierce protectiveness. "I’m taking a private security detail, and I'm going to bring Thomas Wright back to the city. Alive, and ready to talk."
While Daniel went north, the pressure on me intensified. The media had caught wind of the internal rift at Blackstone, and reporters were beginning to circle the hospital. Vivian leaked a blind item to the press hinting at a "greedy daughter-in-law fabricating an assault to seize control of a historic empire."
On the third night of Daniel’s absence, my room telephone rang. It wasn't an internal line.
May you like
"Claire," Vivian’s voice hissed through the receiver. "Your husband is chasing ghosts. If you don't sign the waiver by tomorrow morning, the files on your father go live to every major news outlet in the country. Choose carefully. The reputation of a dead man, or the safety of your unborn children?"
Before I could answer, the line went dead. Seconds later, the monitor monitoring my twins' heart rates began to beep erratically. A sharp, searing pain shot through my pelvic floor. I gasped, reaching for the call button as blood began to seep through the hospital sheets.
