Chapter 4 - The Blood Tie
I lunged for the door, slamming the deadbolt home just as a heavy shoulder crashed against the wood from the outside. The frame shuddered, plaster dust falling from the ceiling.
“Daniel!” Robert shouted, the fake patriarch tone completely gone. Now, he just sounded vicious. “You’re making a massive mistake. That old woman is manipulating you!”
“You stole twelve million dollars from me thirty minutes ago, Robert!” I yelled back, dragging the heavy oak dresser across the floor to block the door. “Did you think I wouldn't check?”
Silence fell on the other side of the door. Then, a dark, low chuckle.
“That was Victoria’s insurance policy,” Robert said through the wood. “She’s a pragmatic girl. Now open the door before my men break it down.”
“Call the police, Grandma,” I said, keeping my voice low.
Margaret already had her old flip phone in her hand. “I’m dialing.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” a new voice said from the hallway.
It was Victoria.
My stomach twisted. She had come in her wedding dress, standing in a rundown hallway with a squad of hired muscle.
“Daniel, darling,” Victoria purred through the door, her tone dripping with mock affection. “If you call the police, what exactly are you going to tell them? That your fiancée transferred money from our joint account? It’s completely legal. And as for your dear grandmother... Robert has the medical paperwork drawn up. She’s officially been diagnosed with severe dementia. We’re just here to take her to a safe, secure medical facility. If the police arrive, they’ll help us load her into the ambulance.”
I looked at Margaret. She looked terrified, clutching the brass key to her chest.
They had thought of everything. Robert’s lawyers were ruthless. They could trap her in a psychiatric ward for years before I could untangle the legal mess.
“We aren’t opening the door,” I said.
“Fine,” Victoria said smoothly. “But you should know something, Daniel. Before you do something you can’t take back.”
I didn’t answer.
“I’m pregnant, Daniel.”
The words hit me like a freight train. I stumbled back, my shoulder hitting the wall.
Pregnant? We had been trying for months.
“You’re lying,” I choked out.
“Am I?” I could hear the smirk in her voice. “I have the ultrasound in my purse. Eight weeks along. Your child, Daniel. The heir to the Whitmore Trust. Now, are you really going to let that old woman destroy our family? Walk out here. Leave her. We can fix this.”
A child. My child. The one thing I had wanted more than anything since losing my parents was a family of my own.
I looked at Margaret. Her eyes were filled with profound sorrow, but not surprise.
“Daniel,” Margaret whispered, reaching into the cardboard box again. She pulled out a small, velvet jewelry box and pressed it into my hands. “She may be carrying a child. But she is not carrying yours.”
I opened the box.
Inside rested an ornate, antique silver bracelet. My mother’s bracelet. The one she wore every single day. The one that was stolen from our house the night my father died.
“Look at the inscription on the inside,” Margaret said.
I tilted it toward the dim light of the kitchen bulb. Scratched into the silver, crude and sharp, were two initials: R.V. + V.V.
Robert Vance and Victoria Vance.
“Victoria was in your house the night your father was killed, Daniel,” Margaret said. “She was eighteen years old. Robert brought her there to clean out the safe before the police arrived. She stole your mother’s jewelry.”
Rage, hot and blinding, flooded my veins.
The child wasn't a blessing. It was a trap. A permanent legal tie to my fortune, regardless of a marriage certificate.
May you like
I looked at the window. There was no fire escape, but there was a ledge that connected to the roof of the adjacent building.
“Get your coat, Grandma,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “We’re leaving.”
