CHAPTER 10 THE MAN BEHIND VIVIENNE
THE MAN BEHIND VIVIENNE
The shooter escaped before police reached the neighboring estate.
Malcolm survived the bullet.
It passed through his shoulder without striking an artery.
He was transferred to a guarded hospital room under an assumed name.
Nathaniel moved Lucas and Elena into the mansion’s underground security suite.
The rooms had been built during the Cold War.
Steel doors separated them from the rest of the house.
Elena sat beside Lucas while he slept.
Nathaniel remained near the doorway.
“You should rest,” she said.
“So should you.”
Neither moved.
After a long silence, Nathaniel spoke.
“I loved him before I knew he existed.”
Elena looked at him.
“Vivienne sent me an ultrasound recording.”
“I listened to it every night.”
“I thought the heartbeat belonged to my child.”
“It did,” Elena said.
“Not biologically.”
“You were waiting for him.”
“That matters.”
Nathaniel sat across from her.
“Why did you return as a maid instead of going to the police?”
“I tried.”
“Two detectives disappeared after taking my statement.”
“One was found dead.”
“The other withdrew everything and moved away.”
“I realized Vivienne was not working alone.”
Nathaniel remembered Malcolm’s warning.
“Who is behind her?”
Elena removed a photograph from her pocket.
It showed Vivienne leaving a private club with an older man.
Nathaniel recognized him immediately.
Senator Charles Vale.
Vale chaired the federal committee investigating corporate inheritance fraud.
He had publicly presented himself as Hart Global’s greatest enemy.
Privately, Nathaniel had suspected Vale wanted control of the company’s defense contracts.
“He is Vivienne’s father,” Elena said.
Nathaniel frowned.
“Her father died when she was a child.”
“That is the public story.”
“Her mother was Vale’s mistress.”
“Vivienne changed her identity before meeting you.”
Nathaniel stared at the photograph.
The marriage had never been romantic.
It had been an infiltration.
Vivienne had entered the Hart family to create a false heir, control the company through the child, and eventually transfer military technology contracts to Vale’s network.
“What happens now that the truth is public?” Nathaniel asked.
“Elena inherits the controlling shares if the will is enforced,” Marcus said from the doorway.
“And Vale will lose everything he spent twenty years building.”
The steel security door suddenly opened behind him.
Marcus spun around.
Only Nathaniel’s biometric scan should have unlocked it.
A woman entered wearing a nurse’s uniform.
She held Lucas against her chest.
A cloth covered his mouth.
Elena screamed.
The woman pointed a pistol at Nathaniel.
“Move and the boy dies.”
Lucas’s eyes fluttered.
He had been drugged.
The nurse backed toward the service tunnel.
Nathaniel raised his hands.
“Take me instead.”
“I was told to bring the heir.”
“He is not the heir anymore.”
The nurse smiled.
“That depends on which will survives.”
The lights went out.
A struggle erupted in the darkness.
Elena heard a gunshot.
Then Lucas cried out.
Emergency lights flickered on.
The nurse lay unconscious on the floor.
Nathaniel was bleeding from his side.
Lucas was gone.
On the wall, someone had written a message in red paint.
May you like
BRING ELENA TO SAINT CATHERINE’S.
COME ALONE.
