Chapter 15 - THE LOWEST POINT
The case stalled.
Without the ledger, several historical claims weakened.
Edmund vanished.
Bellamy claimed ignorance about his whereabouts.
Victoria stopped cooperating.
The media shifted.
Some commentators questioned Catherine’s memory because of years of psychiatric treatment.
Others called me reckless for destroying historic art.
Anonymous stories described Adrian as a manipulated husband controlled by his wife.
Exactly the narrative Victoria wanted from the beginning.
For one week, it felt as though truth itself was becoming tired.
Then Catherine suffered a panic attack outside a courthouse.
Cameras filmed it.
Headlines appeared within an hour.
UNSTABLE HEIRESS BREAKS DOWN.
I threw my phone across the sofa.
Catherine laughed bitterly.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The old trick.”
“They hurt you.”
“Then use your reaction as proof they were right.”
I sat beside her.
“We’re not giving them that.”
“How?”
“By not pretending you’re fine.”
She looked at me.
Healing did not require perfect public composure.
Catherine issued one statement.
“I spent three years confined while being told my living daughter was dead.”
“I am receiving trauma treatment.”
“That does not make the facts untrue.”
The sentence changed public reaction.
Then Lily asked to speak with Detective Vale.
She remembered a sound from the island.
Edmund used to visit.
He carried a leather book.
After reading it, he placed it inside a waterproof tube.
Then he took a boat toward an old lighthouse.
Police searched Ashbourne maritime property records.
The family owned a decommissioned lighthouse through a foundation.
Teams entered.
Inside the base was a sealed compartment.
The silence ledger.
Edmund had hidden it before leaving the United States years earlier.
The version Bellamy removed from the manor was a copy.
Why keep the original?
Insurance.
The Ashbournes trusted leverage more than people.
The ledger named payments.
Some criminal.
Some embarrassing.
Some lawful settlements.
Investigators separated them carefully.
No sensational dump.
No reckless accusation.
Evidence first.
Among the entries sat one connected to Nathaniel’s death.
Payment to a mechanic.
Three days before the crash.
Purpose.
BRAKE SERVICE.
The mechanic had died years earlier.
But his son still had old shop records.
Nathaniel’s brake line had been replaced after the crash investigation began.
Someone had altered evidence.
May you like
The historical homicide inquiry reopened.
And Edmund’s name sat beside the payment authorization.
