Chapter 10 - THE DEAD MAN WHO NEVER DIED
Teresa sat down before her legs failed her.
Victor Baron’s funeral had been closed-casket.
Official cause of death: complications after a private medical procedure overseas.
Elias had identified his father through documents, jewelry, and dental records supplied by Victor’s own physician.
Now federal investigators reopened everything.
The dental records were fake.
The physician had disappeared two weeks after the funeral.
Victor Baron had staged his death.
Why?
The answer arrived through Emilio.
He was arrested at Logan Airport attempting to board a flight under a false name.
When investigators showed him the letters, he laughed bitterly.
“You finally found Uncle Victor.”
Elias entered the interview room.
“Where is he?”
Emilio looked almost relieved.
“You spent six years cleaning a business he never stopped controlling.”
Victor had stayed overseas, moving money through charitable foundations, schools, construction firms, and family intermediaries.
Emilio had acted as his American operator.
Ridgemont was supposed to become the cleanest channel yet.
A respected school.
A giant anonymous gift.
Nobody would question it.
But Teresa’s secret test had complicated everything.
Then Karen began asking about Micah.
One teacher and one scholarship student had accidentally threatened an international financial network.
Elias asked the question that mattered.
“Where is my father?”
Emilio refused.
Until Elias placed Rebecca’s original ledger on the table.
Emilio’s confidence vanished.
Victor had spent two decades searching for it.
Elias leaned closer.
“Tell me where he is, or federal prosecutors see every page before lunch.”
Emilio gave them a location.
A private house outside Providence.
Agents moved immediately.
They found computers.
Cash.
Passports.
But no Victor.
Only a video playing on a television.
Victor Baron appeared older, thinner, but unmistakably alive.
He looked directly into the camera.
“Elias, if you’re watching this, your mother finally chose strangers over blood.”
Teresa covered her mouth.
Victor continued.
Then he said something none of them expected.
“Ask Karen Marsh why her mother was really at that hospital twenty-two years ago.”
The screen went black.
Karen frowned.
Her mother had been a janitor.
Hadn’t she?
Teresa began crying.
And Karen realized there was still something Teresa had never told her.
Rebecca Marsh had not originally worked at that hospital as a cleaner.
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She had been an accountant.
And she had deliberately taken the janitor job to investigate Victor Baron.
