Chapter 25 - The Trap Beneath the Trust
Our attorneys worked through the night.
At 4:17 AM, they found it.
Buried inside a trust amendment executed years before my marriage was a guardianship contingency.
If I died while Aria was a minor, control of several voting trusts would temporarily transfer to a court-approved family fiduciary until she reached adulthood.
The designated fiduciary?
Parker.
I stared at the document.
“He wrote himself into my daughter's inheritance.”
My father looked ready to kill someone.
“Can we revoke it?”
“Already done,” our trust attorney replied.
“But there's another problem.”
She placed a second document in front of me.
Parker had filed an emergency petition twelve hours earlier challenging the amendment.
“On what grounds?”
“That Arthur Sterling exercised coercive control over you and that recent decisions demonstrate diminished independent judgment.”
I laughed.
“He's claiming I'm incompetent?”
“He's building toward it.”
Adrian leaned against the table.
“He doesn't need to win.”
I looked at him.
“He needs discovery.”
Exactly.
A lawsuit would give Parker legal mechanisms to demand trust records, financial statements, historical agreements, and Sterling family documents.
He wanted something buried inside those archives.
“What?”
Nobody knew.
Then my assistant entered.
“Vivienne, there's a delivery downstairs.”
“From whom?”
“No sender.”
Security scanned it before bringing it upstairs.
Inside was a children's music box.
My blood ran cold.
The same model sat inside Aria's nursery.
I opened it carefully.
Instead of music, a recorded voice played.
Parker.
“Hello, cousin.”
My father reached for the box.
I stopped him.
Parker continued.
“You're probably wondering why I haven't left Seattle.”
I looked at Adrian.
We had been right.
“Because leaving would suggest I'm afraid of you.”
A soft mechanical click came from inside the box.
A hidden compartment opened.
There was a key.
And an address.
May you like
Parker's voice concluded:
“Come find out what Arthur Sterling buried beneath his empire.”
