Chapter 11 - The Price of a Father’s Protection
Mara stared at Simon.
“Tested for what?”
Simon looked at Julian.
“Gideon suspected Charles had tampered with the family medical records. He wanted to know whether Julian carried a rare heart condition before naming him successor to the trust.” Charles laughed from the floor.
“That is not what he means.”
“Be quiet,” Julian said.
Simon continued,
“The test was ordinary. Blood work, genetic screening, nothing more. Julian passed. I arranged it because Gideon asked me to protect his son.”
Mara’s fear loosened slightly, but the questions remained.
“Why would Charles say the baby’s first heartbeat?”
Simon’s face tightened.
“Because he accessed your prenatal records. He knows the clinic used a monitoring device that briefly stopped during your first appointment.”
Mara remembered that day. The nurse had frowned at the screen, then changed the monitor’s batteries. She had been terrified for ten minutes before the heartbeat returned. Charles had taken a harmless incident and turned it into a weapon.
Julian helped Mara toward the depot door.
“We are leaving.”
Lena kept her gun trained on Charles while Simon helped her wrap the wound. Pike lay unconscious near the desk.
“The police will take them,” Lena said.
“Will they?” Charles asked.
He smiled at the flashing terminal. Mara followed his gaze. The upload had stopped at sixty-eight percent. Charles had known where the server was.
He had probably cut the connection before coming through the door.
“You did not get the evidence out,” he said.
“You only gave me time to find the source.”
The approaching sirens grew louder.
“You are still under arrest,” Lena said.
“For what? A gunshot fired by Pike? A fire at my own property? A struggle with a trespasser?”
His confidence was returning. Mara looked at the documents in Simon’s hands. They had the originals, but no copies had reached Nora. If Charles’s lawyers moved quickly, he could challenge every page as stolen property and every witness as compromised.
“We need the backup,” she said.
Simon nodded.
“There is one.”
“Where?”
“Hartwell House.”
Julian’s face hardened.
“No.”
“Your father stored a second archive beneath the clock room. The ledger is only an index. The actual bank records are there.”
“Charles will be waiting.”
“He has been waiting for years.”
Mara touched Julian’s arm.
“We need it.”
He met her gaze. She could see the argument inside him: the instinct to protect her by removing her from danger, and the growing understanding that she had to be part of the decision.
“We go together,” he said.
Charles rose as the police entered the depot. One officer took Pike into custody, while another read Charles his rights. Charles allowed himself to be handcuffed, still smiling.
“You cannot enter the house without a warrant,” he said.
Lena looked at Mara.
“I can obtain one if the state attorney’s office receives the initial evidence.”
“We have enough to show probable cause,” Mara said.
“Not if the upload failed.”
Simon took out a small memory card.
“I sent a partial file before we entered the office.”
Mara blinked.
“To whom?”
“A journalist I trust.”
“Who?”
Simon gave her a name. Mara recognized it immediately. Her former editor, Daniel Cross, had spent a decade exposing corporate fraud. If he had even part of the evidence, Charles could no longer bury the story quietly.
The warrant came through ninety minutes later. By then, Mara, Julian, Simon, Elena, and Lena had reached the gates of Hartwell House with state police behind them. Smoke still rose from the east wing. Rain had turned the lawn into a field of mud.
Peter stood near the gatehouse, soaked and pale.
“Where is Beatrice?” Julian asked.
Peter looked toward the house.
“She was inside when the fire began.”
Mara felt a sharp twist of dread.
“Did she get out?”
“I do not know.”
The police entered first. Mara followed Julian through the front doors. The hall was hazy with smoke, portraits blackened along the walls. Somewhere above them, alarms shrieked.
They found Beatrice in the library, trapped behind a fallen beam. Julian rushed toward her, but the beam shifted.
“Wait,” Mara said.
“The floor is weakened.”
She studied the angle of the timber, the cracked ceiling, and the fire crawling along the curtains.
“We need the pulley from the gallery.”
Julian looked at her.
“How do you know that?”
“I read the restoration plans.”
With two officers, she rigged the old counterweight system and lifted the beam enough for Beatrice to crawl free. Beatrice clung to Julian, sobbing.
“I tried to stop him,” she said.
“You helped him,” Julian replied.
She pulled back.
“I thought Mara wanted the trust. I thought if I gave Charles the first letter, he would leave you alone. I did not know he planned the crash.”
Mara heard the confession and felt no satisfaction.
“What first letter?”
Beatrice looked at her.
“The one where you told Julian you were pregnant.”
Julian went still. Beatrice reached inside her coat and removed a sealed plastic sleeve.
“Charles did not destroy it,” she said.
May you like
“He kept it as proof that the child existed.”
Mara took the letter. The words she had written five months earlier were still visible beneath the plastic. At the bottom, in Charles’s handwriting, one sentence had been added. IF YOU WANT YOUR CHILD TO LIVE, COME TO THE CLOCK ROOM ALONE.
