Chapter 7 - The Hidden Beneficiary
Malcolm Reeve survived surgery and refused to speak again without immunity.
Daria remained in federal custody, but her attorneys secured an emergency hearing challenging the arrest.
Dr. Weston blamed every crime on Daria.
The guards blamed Weston.
The case was strong, yet the company moved faster than the courts.
At six in the morning, the Kincaid board received a notarized amendment naming a new beneficiary.
Lucian Vale.
Arthur read the name from his hospital bed and went pale.
Samuel noticed.
"Who is he?"
Arthur looked toward the door before answering.
"My son."
The revelation stunned everyone except Catherine.
She had suspected a connection when she saw the surname in Blackthorn's visitor records.
Arthur explained that Lucian had disappeared twenty years earlier after being accused of stealing from the Kincaid family.
Arthur believed the accusation.
He had disowned his son and remained loyal to Thomas.
"What if he did not steal anything?" Catherine asked.
Arthur's silence answered her.
Daria had used Lucian as an intermediary for shell corporations long before Catherine entered the family.
When Lucian became inconvenient, Daria framed him and drove him overseas.
Now she had brought him back as a legal decoy.
The amendment claimed Lucian was Thomas Kincaid's unrecognized biological son.
If accepted, he would outrank Samuel under an obscure bloodline provision.
Samuel laughed without humor.
"My father would have told me."
Arthur closed his eyes.
"Thomas knew Lucian might be his."
Many years earlier, before Samuel was born, Thomas and Arthur's wife had shared a brief affair.
Arthur had forgiven her but never Thomas.
He remained at the mansion because leaving would have meant abandoning the only world he knew.
"Daria knew," Arthur said.
"She always knew."
Catherine understood the strategy.
Daria had spent decades keeping Lucian hidden as an emergency weapon.
If Samuel became uncontrollable, she could use Lucian to fracture the inheritance.
If Catherine and Penelope claimed the trust, Lucian could challenge the legitimacy of the entire document.
Ortiz located Lucian at a private airfield preparing to leave the country.
He did not resist arrest because he had committed no crime under his own name.
He agreed to meet Samuel.
Lucian was fifty, lean, and sharply dressed.
He had Arthur's eyes and Thomas Kincaid's posture.
The resemblance unsettled Samuel.
"Daria promised me what your father stole," Lucian said.
"Did she tell you she murdered him?"
"She told me you would say that."
Catherine placed the original will on the table.
"She also kidnapped me and held me for two years."
Lucian looked at her scars.
His confidence faltered, but only slightly.
"I am sorry for what happened to you. It does not erase what happened to me."
He produced letters allegedly written by Thomas acknowledging paternity and promising compensation.
The signatures appeared genuine.
Samuel saw that Lucian was not merely greedy.
He was a wounded man who believed the Kincaids had stolen his life.
That made him more dangerous because anger could be negotiated, but belief could not.
"Daria wants us fighting," Samuel said.
"Of course she does."
"Then why are you helping her?"
"Because people like you always discover morality after the money is secured."
Lucian left the room.
Catherine noticed that one of his letters carried a faint chemical smell.
She asked Ortiz to send it to the laboratory.
The ink was old.
The paper was old.
The signature was genuine.
However, the text had been printed over erased writing using a restoration process available only through Dr. Weston's research company.
Daria had transformed authentic letters into a false paternity record.
Ortiz prepared an arrest warrant for document fraud.
Before it could be served, Lucian vanished from federal surveillance.
Arthur received a video call from his son's phone.
Lucian appeared tied to a chair inside the family chapel.
Behind him stood Daria.
She had escaped custody during transport after a staged collision involving a prison medical van.
"Bring Catherine and the original will to the chapel," Daria said.
"Or Arthur will watch his son die for the second time."
The camera shifted.
A second captive was shown beside Lucian.
Penelope's federal nurse lay unconscious on the floor.
The child's crib was empty.
May you like
Daria smiled into the lens.
"And Samuel will lose his daughter before he learns how to be her father."
