Chapter 14 - THE CHILD WHO HAD NOT BEEN BORN
My fertility records were private.
Yet photographs showed me leaving the clinic.
Bellamy’s files contained treatment dates.
Someone inside the clinic had leaked information.
Police traced payments to an administrative employee.
She claimed she only confirmed appointments.
She did not know why.
Small compromise.
Big machine.
Again.
Victoria had planned ahead.
If I became pregnant, family-trust calculations changed.
A future child could inherit Ashbourne interests.
That made removing me legally more complicated.
A-17 had a timeline.
Complete before pregnancy confirmation if possible.
My body had become a deadline inside someone else’s strategy.
I felt violated in a way I could barely explain.
Adrian blamed himself.
I refused to let him turn my fear into his self-punishment.
“Help me fix what exists.”
I said.
“Don’t perform guilt.”
He listened.
That mattered.
We decided to pause fertility treatment.
Not because the family won.
Because our marriage needed truth before adding another life.
Then investigators discovered one more reason Victoria feared my pregnancy.
Arthur Bellamy—no relation to Charles—an old Marlowe trustee connected to my father’s shipping shares had drafted a cross-family succession option.
If Adrian and I had a child, some Ashbourne voting rights could eventually combine with my shipping interest.
That future child might hold enough influence to challenge Victoria’s preferred heirs.
She had turned potential grandchildren into board mathematics.
Adrian stared at the structure.
“My mother planned against our children.”
“Yes.”
He looked sick.
Then Catherine noticed something.
“Not against the children.”
“Against Elena.”
She was right.
Victoria did not need to harm a child.
She only needed to remove the mother before legal rights solidified.
Just like Catherine.
Just like A-17.
The pattern repeated because it had worked before.
Then police recovered a voicemail from Nathaniel’s old answering system archive.
His voice.
“If anything happens to me, Edmund is not the only problem.”
“Victoria believes she can control the family by controlling the women who marry into it.”
Catherine covered her mouth.
Nathaniel had understood decades earlier.
The gala had not created a new crime.
It had broken open an old architecture.
Then word came from Monaco.
Edmund was willing to surrender.
But only if prosecutors guaranteed one thing.
The silence ledger would never be made public.
They refused.
May you like
Hours later, Edmund disappeared from his apartment.
The ledger disappeared with him.
