Chapter 9 - The Lie on the Front Page.
By three o'clock, my phone had become unusable.
Messages arrived from numbers I did not recognize.
Two reporters called.
A producer left a voicemail asking whether I would discuss my "relationship with the Cross family."
Someone posted a picture of my apartment building online.
That was the moment fear replaced anger.
Stellan took my phone, looked at the screen, and handed it to Naomi.
"Change her number."
"You can't change my number."
He looked at me.
"Someone posted your address."
"I still need my phone."
"You'll get another one."
"You don't get to redesign my life every time something scares you."
His eyes sharpened.
"This should scare you."
"It does."
"Then stop treating protection like an insult."
"Stop treating control like protection."
The room went silent.
Helena looked down.
Naomi suddenly found the laptop fascinating.
Stellan stared at me.
For a second, I saw exactly how arguments with Adrian must have felt.
Then something shifted in his expression.
He exhaled.
"You're right."
I blinked.
"What?"
"I said you're right."
"I heard you."
"Then don't make me repeat it."
I almost laughed.
He stepped closer.
"Your number is yours."
"Thank you."
"But someone from security goes with you if you leave."
"Stellan."
"Compromise."
"That isn't compromise."
"It is from me."
That time I did laugh.
The sound surprised both of us.
Fern, sitting in a playpen nearby, laughed because I did.
Stellan looked at her.
His entire face softened.
Then his phone rang.
The board.
He answered in the conference room.
I could not hear every word through the closed door.
I heard enough.
"No."
A pause.
"Her name is Fern."
Another pause.
"I don't care what the market thinks about an eleven-month-old."
Longer silence.
"Then call an emergency session."
The door opened twenty minutes later.
Stellan looked furious.
Helena stood.
"What did they say?"
"They want me to issue a statement denying any family connection until DNA results are final."
My stomach tightened.
"That sounds reasonable."
He looked at me.
"It isn't."
"Why?"
"Because the statement they drafted calls your claim unverified and financially motivated."
Heat rushed to my face.
"I never made a claim."
"I know."
"I didn't ask for money."
"I know."
"Then tell them that."
"I did."
"And?"
His mouth tightened.
"They prefer the version that protects the stock price."
Helena looked away.
"That sounds like your father."
Stellan's eyes cut toward her.
"Do not compare me to him today."
"I wasn't."
"You signed Gideon's petition."
The temperature dropped.
Helena's face tightened.
"Because he told me someone else had already prepared one."
"Who?"
"He wouldn't say."
"And you signed anyway."
"I was trying to keep control inside the family."
"There it is."
Stellan's voice became quiet.
"The sentence that ruins everything."
Helena looked wounded.
"I was protecting Fern."
"By claiming authority over what belongs to her."
"I was trying to make sure strangers didn't."
I stood between them before the argument could become something neither could take back.
"Stop."
Both turned toward me.
It was ridiculous that two Crosses obeyed a housekeeper, but they did.
"Fern doesn't care about a trust."
I pointed toward the playpen.
"She cares that her rabbit is under the sofa."
Stellan looked.
The cream rabbit was indeed under the sofa.
Fern pointed at it with increasing outrage.
Helena retrieved it.
Fern smiled at her.
The tension broke just enough for everyone to remember what the argument was supposed to protect.
Then Naomi entered.
"I found the leak."
Stellan turned.
"Who?"
"The surveillance photograph in the article came from the archived Cross family server."
"Access log?"
"Yes."
She placed a tablet on the table.
"The file was downloaded last night at 1:17 a.m."
"By Gideon?"
"No."
She looked at Helena.
"By your account."
Helena went pale.
"That's impossible."
Stellan stared at her.
"Mother."
"I did not leak that photograph."
Naomi nodded.
"I believe you."
"Why?"
"Because the login came from an IP address in Lake Geneva."
My skin prickled.
The property.
The person who had entered while we were downtown.
"Someone used her credentials," I said.
"Correct."
Stellan looked at Helena.
"Who knows your password?"
"No one."
"Think."
She did.
Then her face changed.
"Gideon set up the account."
Stellan laughed once without humor.
"Of course he did."
Naomi shook her head.
"There's another problem."
She swiped to another screen.
"The download was not the only activity."
"What else?"
"Someone opened the trust documents."
"Which ones?"
"Adrian's beneficiary schedule."
Helena sat down.
"Why?"
Naomi looked at Stellan.
"Because there's a clause none of us noticed."
"What clause?"
She zoomed in on a paragraph.
"If Adrian died leaving a biological child, his voting shares are held in trust until that child turns twenty-five."
"We know that."
"The trustee isn't automatically Stellan."
Stellan's expression sharpened.
"Who is it?"
Naomi looked uncomfortable.
"The trustee named in your grandfather's original document is Gideon Vale."
The room went quiet.
I felt cold all over.
"So if Fern is Adrian's daughter—"
"Gideon controls her voting shares," Stellan finished.
Helena stood abruptly.
"That's why he wanted the DNA test."
"That's why he wanted the petition," Naomi said.
Stellan stared at the clause.
"And that's why he leaked the story."
I looked at him.
"Why would publicity help him?"
"Pressure."
His voice was flat.
"If the board believes Fern creates instability, they'll want someone experienced managing the trust."
"Gideon."
"Exactly."
My stomach turned.
The entire city was debating a baby because a man wanted leverage over shares she could not pronounce.
"Can you stop him?"
Stellan looked at Helena.
"If the DNA comes back positive, not easily."
"Then don't do the test," I said.
Everyone looked at me.
I held Fern's rabbit in one hand.
"If proving she belongs to Adrian gives Gideon control, don't prove it."
Stellan stared at me for a long moment.
"You would walk away from her inheritance?"
"I would walk away from every dollar in this house if it kept someone from using my daughter."
Something changed behind his eyes.
Respect.
Maybe grief.
"Adrian chose well," Helena whispered.
I looked at her.
The compliment hurt because Adrian was not there to hear it.
Stellan turned toward Naomi.
"Can we suspend the test?"
She shook her head.
"The lab already has the samples."
"Then call them."
"We can ask them not to release the results."
"Do it."
Naomi picked up her phone.
Before she could dial, Stellan's phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
"Cross."
A man's voice spoke loudly enough that I could hear fragments.
Lab.
Expedited.
Results ready.
Stellan's eyes closed.
"Do not send them to anyone else."
A pause.
His face hardened.
"What do you mean already released?"
Everyone in the room froze.
He listened.
Then he looked at me.
"Released to whom?"
Another pause.
His voice became dangerously calm.
"Gideon Vale."
The answer was obvious before he repeated the name.
The lab had sent Fern's family relationship results to the attorney listed on the trust petition.
Gideon knew before we did.
And thirty seconds later, my phone buzzed with another news alert.
CROSS FAMILY DNA TEST CONFIRMS BABY'S BLOODLINE.
Fern's identity was public before I had even been allowed to learn the result myself.
The reporters reached the estate gates before dinner.
From the second-floor window, I could see lights from their cameras flashing against the ironwork.
One woman stood beneath an umbrella speaking into a microphone.
Another reporter held up a blown-up photograph of me taken outside my apartment.
I stepped away from the glass.
"I hate this."
Stellan stood several feet behind me.
"I can have the curtains closed."
"That doesn't make them disappear."
"No."
"I spent months trying not to be noticed."
"I know."
"Now strangers are discussing whether I trapped a man I didn't even know was rich."
His jaw tightened.
"They are wrong."
"Wrong people can still be loud."
Fern sat on the carpet beside us, hitting two wooden blocks together.
She looked up every time the distant crowd made noise.
I picked her up.
"I don't want her growing up inside this."
Stellan looked toward the gates.
"Neither do I."
"This is your world."
"That doesn't mean it has to become hers."
I studied him.
"Can you actually promise that?"
He took longer to answer than I expected.
"No."
The honesty surprised me.
"I can promise I won't lie to you about what I can control."
He looked at Fern.
"And I can promise I will never use her privacy as an excuse to decide her life for her."
That was not a grand promise.
It was better.
It was specific.
I nodded.
A few minutes later, a reporter shouted my name from beyond the gates as if volume created permission.
Stellan reached toward the curtain.
Then stopped.
May you like
"Your choice," he said.
I closed it myself.
