Chapter 5 - The TrapThe boardroom emptied within minutes.
Nobody wanted to be around when billion-dollar secrets started bleeding onto the table.
Mia stayed.
Julian tried to force her out.
I stopped him.
“She stays.”
He glared at me.
“You don't know what she's doing.”
“Neither do you anymore.”
Mia sat down.
Her hands were trembling.
“I need protection,” she whispered.
Khloe nodded.
“You'll have it.”
“From Julian?”
“From everyone.”
Mia swallowed.
“Then I'll tell you everything.”
Julian laughed.
“She's lying.”
Mia looked at him.
“You told me to get pregnant.”
The room went silent.
Julian's expression changed.
“I already knew about you and Clare,” Mia continued. “I knew she was trustee.”
I stared at her.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Julian's face was stone.
Mia looked at me.
“He showed me the trust agreement.”
That hurt more than I expected.
The trust had always been my work.
My intellectual fortress.
Julian had taken my own legal architecture and used it against me.
Mia continued.
“He told me that if I gave him a son, the family would support him.”
“And Lucas?”
“My son is real.”
“I know.”
“He loves me.”
“Then why did you agree to this?”
She looked down.
“Because Julian promised to marry me.”
I nearly laughed.
“You believed him?”
She closed her eyes.
“I was stupid.”
“No.”
I stared at her.
“You were ambitious.”
She looked up.
That sentence landed.
Then Khloe asked the question that mattered.
“Who forged Clare's signature?”
Mia's face drained.
“I don't know.”
“Think.”
“I never signed anything.”
“We know.”
“Then it wasn't Julian.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“He never touched the paperwork.”
Khloe leaned forward.
“Who did?”
Mia hesitated.
Then whispered:
“Ethan.”
I knew the name.
Ethan Vance.
Julian's younger brother.
The family’s chief financial officer.
The man who had attended our wedding.
The man who had once told me I was “the only person in the family who actually understood numbers.”
Khloe immediately checked the transaction records.
The forged signatures had been submitted through Ethan's office.
My pulse quickened.
“Bring him in.”
But Ethan was already gone.
His office was empty.
His company phone was disconnected.
His car had left the underground garage twenty minutes earlier.
And one of his assistants was missing.
Khloe looked at me.
“He ran.”
“Then we know he’s guilty.”
“Maybe.”
She stopped.
“What?”
She turned her screen toward me.
“There’s another problem.”
A trust account had been accessed using my credentials at 3:17 a.m.
The transaction transferred ten million dollars.
Destination:
A private account in the Cayman Islands.
I stared at the screen.
“I was in the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“And Julian?”
“Also in the hospital.”
Mia looked sick.
“Then who logged in?”
Khloe zoomed in.
The answer appeared.
A device identifier.
My phone.
I looked at my phone sitting on the table.
Impossible.
Until I remembered something.
Three weeks earlier, Julian had asked me to install a security update.
He had held my phone.
For less than five minutes.
Khloe whispered:
“He cloned it.”
The room went cold.
I remembered that moment.
Julian smiling.
Kissing my forehead.
Saying, “Your phone is ridiculously easy to hack.”
I had laughed.
Now I wanted to scream.
A knock came at the door.
An assistant entered.
“Mrs. Vance?”
“Yes?”
“This just arrived for you.”
She handed me a black envelope.
No return address.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Elena.
Sleeping in my arms.
Taken from outside the hospital window.
On the back, six words were written.
Give up the trust or she disappears.
My blood turned to ice.
Khloe stood immediately.
“Security!”
I looked toward the window.
A black SUV sat across the street.
Its engine was running.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A man's voice whispered:
“You should have let Julian win.”
The line disconnected.
And for the first time since Elena was born, I realized this wasn't a family dispute.
May you like
Someone was willing to hurt my child.
And they had already found us.
