Daniel grabbed Arthur’s shoulders. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Arthur told him.
Daniel’s face changed from shock to disbelief, then to something colder.
“My father married Eleanor when I was fourteen,” he said. “She’s cruel. Controlling. But murder?”
Arthur met his eyes.
“She expected Mrs. Vance to hit the floor.”
A doctor stepped into the hall.
“Mr. Vance?”
Daniel turned.
“We have a placental abruption. Your wife is stable for the moment, but the baby is in distress.”
Daniel went white.
“We may have to deliver tonight.”
Then Arthur’s phone vibrated.
A text from Nora.
THE CAMERAS WERE ERASED.
Chap 3
Daniel stared at Arthur’s screen.
“Who?”
Arthur typed back.
Nora replied with one name.
MILES.
Miles Chen was the estate’s twenty-four-year-old junior systems technician, the person nobody noticed unless the Wi-Fi stopped working.
Three months earlier, after a ransomware scare, he had quietly installed an isolated backup server in the gardening office. Eleanor knew about the main system. She did not know about the backup.
Arthur called him.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
“Find him,” Daniel said.
Arthur started toward the elevator, but the doctor stopped him.
“Mr. Vance, your wife is asking for both of you.”
Sarah lay pale beneath hospital lights, monitors surrounding her.
Daniel rushed to her side.
“I’m here.”
She grabbed his hand.
“Did you believe Arthur?”
The question hit him harder than an accusation.
“Sarah—”
“Did you?”
Daniel looked down.
“I believe you.”
“Now?”
He flinched.
For months Sarah had told him Eleanor hated her. Daniel had called it tension. He had explained away insults, canceled invitations, and money suddenly withheld from charities Sarah supported.
He had kept asking Sarah to be patient.
Now patience had almost killed her.
“I should have listened sooner.”
Sarah turned her face away as tears gathered.
A nurse entered and checked the fetal monitor.
The baby’s heartbeat dipped.
Everyone went still.
Then it climbed again.
“Please,” Sarah whispered. “Don’t let her near our child.”
“I won’t.”
At the Vance estate, Detective Ortiz found Miles’s workroom unlocked.
His laptop was gone.
So was his coat.
Nora stood in the doorway. “He never leaves during a shift.”
Ortiz looked at the empty desk.
“Did Eleanor know he managed the camera system?”
“Everyone did.”
Outside, rain began tapping against the greenhouse roof.
A groundskeeper ran in.
“Detective? There’s a car by the service road.”
They found Miles’s compact sedan half-hidden behind a line of cypress trees.
The driver’s door was open.
His phone lay facedown in the mud.
No Miles.
Ortiz scanned the road.
Tire marks cut across the wet gravel.
Not one vehicle.
Two.
Back at the hospital, Daniel received a call from Eleanor.
He nearly ignored it.
Sarah watched him answer.
“Daniel,” Eleanor said, sounding wounded. “You need to come home before this gets out of control.”
“My wife is in a hospital because of you.”
“That woman slipped.”
“Arthur saw you.”
“Arthur is old. He’s confused.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn everyone else into the problem.”
Eleanor’s voice cooled.
“You have no idea what Sarah has been doing behind your back.”
Daniel looked at his wife.
“What are you talking about?”
Eleanor paused.
Then she said, “Ask her why she met with your father’s old probate lawyer three days ago.”
Sarah’s eyes widened.
Daniel slowly lowered the phone.
“You met with Martin Hale?”
Billionaire Heiress Kicked a Maid in Front of 500 Guests—Not Knowing She…
🚨 SHE TRIED TO KICK A MAID IN FRONT OF 500 BILLIONAIRES… BUT SHE HAD NO IDEA WHO SHE WAS MESSING WITH.“KNOW YOUR PLACE, YOU PATHE…
MY HUSBAND BROUGHT HIS MISTRESS HOME ON CHRISTMAS WHILE I WAS 6 MONTHS P…
MY HUSBAND BROUGHT HIS MISTRESS HOME ON CHRISTMAS EVE WHILE I WAS SIX MONTHS PREGNANT—THEN HUMILIATED ME IN FRONT OF HIS ENTIRE FA…
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Chap 4
“Why did you meet Dad’s lawyer?” Daniel asked.
Sarah stared at the ceiling.
“Because he contacted me first.”
Daniel stepped closer. “About what?”
“Your father.”
Charles Vance had been dead for fourteen months. His death from a sudden heart attack had left Eleanor controlling the family trust until Daniel turned forty-five—or until certain provisions in the will were triggered.
Daniel was forty-two.
Sarah took a shaky breath.
“Martin said your father left a sealed letter. It could only be opened if I became pregnant.”
Daniel’s face tightened. “That makes no sense.”
“It didn’t to me either.”
“What did the letter say?”
Sarah looked toward Arthur.
“He warned me about Eleanor.”
Daniel laughed once, without humor. “My father married her.”
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