Chapter 7 - EVELYN WANTED THE BABY, NOT THE MONEY
I had known Evelyn Dre for nine years.
She sent handwritten birthday cards.
Remembered how I took my coffee.
Bought our daughter her first blanket before we knew she was a girl.
And apparently paid someone to drug me.
Police brought her to the hospital for questioning.
She requested to speak with me.
Nathan objected.
I agreed.
Evelyn entered without jewelry, makeup, or the elegant composure she usually wore like armor.
“Did you hire Camille Ross?”
“Yes.”
Matthias made a sound behind me.
“Mom?”
Evelyn did not look at him.
I asked, “Why?”
“To get you out of that hospital.”
I stared.
“She brought a sedative.”
“I told her to move you.”
“Against my will?”
Evelyn’s voice cracked.
“Because the hospital was compromised.”
Nathan leaned forward.
“Then why not call police?”
“Because Conrad owns people in that department.”
She opened her handbag slowly.
Police had searched it.
Inside was a letter.
Evelyn had discovered Conrad’s fraud eight months earlier.
She also knew Dre Capital was collapsing.
But she claimed Conrad never intended to kill me.
“He wanted Serena declared temporarily incompetent.”
My blood chilled.
“Why?”
“If you went into premature labor under extreme psychological distress, Matthias could petition for emergency management authority over certain marital assets.”
Nathan swore.
It was ugly.
But legally plausible enough to create chaos.
Evelyn had discovered the plan and hired Camille to move me to a private clinic outside Conrad’s reach.
“But Camille tried to inject me without telling me.”
Evelyn’s face changed.
“That was not the instruction.”
Maybe she was lying.
Maybe not.
Then Matthias asked,
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Evelyn finally looked at her son.
“Because you tell your father everything.”
Matthias flinched.
Accurate.
My contractions remained stable.
Our daughter was still safe.
For the moment.
Then Gregory Vale arrived at the hospital under federal protection.
Fiona stood beside him.
He was thinner than his photograph.
Scarred along one side of his neck.
He placed a flash drive on my bedside table.
“Everything Conrad did is on there.”
Nathan asked, “Including tonight?”
Gregory shook his head.
“No.”
Someone else planned the Christmas operation.
Gregory had sent the warning after intercepting communications.
“What communications?”
He opened a laptop.
Messages between an unknown user and someone using the code name WINTER.
One line appeared repeatedly.
MATERNAL EVENT MUST OCCUR BEFORE VESTING.
I touched my stomach.
Gregory continued.
“Conrad wanted control of Serena’s assets.”
“And Winter?”
“Wanted the child.”
The room became silent.
I almost laughed because the statement was absurd.
“What does that mean?”
Gregory opened another document.
A draft emergency guardianship petition.
If I died or became incapacitated and Matthias was implicated in criminal wrongdoing, temporary custody of my daughter would pass to the person named as alternate guardian.
I had never seen the document.
My signature was forged.
The alternate guardian was Evelyn Dre.
Everyone turned toward her.
Evelyn looked horrified.
“I didn’t do that.”
Nathan examined the metadata.
The petition had been created on Matthias’s laptop.
Three months earlier.
During the exact weekend he spent at the New Haven hotel.
Matthias whispered,
“Fiona.”
She shook her head.
But I suddenly remembered who else had access to the suite.
Someone Fiona had secretly been meeting there.
Her father.
Gregory Vale had warned me about the plot.
May you like
Yet the forged guardianship papers were created while he had access to Matthias’s computer.
And for the first time, I wondered whether our supposed whistleblower had been protecting us at all.
