Chapter 7 - Victoria's Perfect Alibi
Edward entered protective custody before sunrise. Natalie was allowed to see him for ten minutes inside a federal building, separated by glass until agents completed a security assessment.
She stood with both hands pressed against the barrier.
"You were alive."
Edward nodded, unable to speak at first.
"Did you watch us?"
"From a distance."
"Then you watched her turn Diego into this."
"I watched him choose her again and again."
Natalie's tears became anger. "He was seventeen."
Edward closed his eyes. That answer would haunt him more than accusation.
Valerie did not attend the reunion. She sat with federal prosecutor Rachel Kim, Detective Blake, and Miriam Shaw in a conference room where the Calder ledger lay beneath protective film. The entries were enough to justify warrants against Blackridge, but not enough to identify the people who had enforced the scheme.
The coded initials beside Thomas's name were not Julian Cross's.
They were V.C.
Victoria Carter appeared to have authorized surveillance of Thomas shortly before his death.
Yet Diego's message claimed she had not ordered the killing.
"He may be manipulating you," Kim warned.
"He may also be trying to survive," Valerie said.
That afternoon, agents searched the Carter mansion. They found shredded loan applications, duplicate notary stamps, and a hidden room behind the library shelves. The room contained files on dozens of families whose estates had been targeted by Blackridge.
Victoria was arrested for conspiracy, fraud, obstruction, and witness intimidation.
She wore the burgundy dress from the dinner when officers led her down the mansion steps. Reporters shouted questions. Victoria kept her chin high and said only one thing.
"Ask Valerie who truly benefits."
At her arraignment, Victoria produced an alibi for the night Thomas died. She had attended a hospital fundraiser in New York and appeared in photographs throughout the evening. Travel records confirmed she did not return to Boston until the next morning.
Her attorney argued that the initials V.C. belonged to a former Blackridge executive named Vernon Cole.
Vernon Cole had died two years earlier.
The explanation was possible, but convenient.
Valerie returned to Harbor Point for the first time since the assault. The condo felt unfamiliar. Diego's coats still hung in the hall closet. His coffee mug sat beside the sink. She moved from room to room, realizing how much space his moods had occupied.
She packed his belongings into boxes.
In the bedroom, she found a loose floorboard beneath his side of the bed. Inside was a key, a folded train schedule, and a photograph of Julian Cross shaking hands with a woman Valerie recognized from childhood.
Her mother.
Helen Bell stood beside Cross at a charity event dated seventeen years earlier.
On the back, Diego had written: Ask her why Thomas changed his will.
Valerie called Helen.
Her mother denied knowing Cross beyond a brief introduction. Valerie sent the image.
Helen's voice changed.
"I should have told you sooner."
She confessed that Thomas once worked for Blackridge as outside counsel. He discovered the firm's fraud while helping structure loans. When he tried to leave, Cross threatened Valerie, who was then a teenager. Thomas remained long enough to copy files and build a case.
"Did Dad change his will?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Helen hesitated. "He learned something about your birth."
Valerie felt the room narrow around her.
Helen said Thomas was her legal father and loved her completely, but he was not her biological father. Her biological father had been an unnamed man connected to the Calder family.
The fourth beneficiary.
Valerie sat on the edge of the bed.
The trust amendment did not make her powerful merely because she was Diego's spouse. She might also be a direct descendant of Eleanor Calder Carter.
Someone knocked at the condo door.
Blake had stationed an officer outside, so Valerie expected police. Instead, she heard the officer speak sharply, followed by a woman's voice.
"I need to see my sister."
Valerie opened the door.
May you like
A stranger stood in the hall, perhaps forty, with dark blond hair and Thomas Bell's gray eyes. She held a sealed laboratory report.
"My name is Claire Cross," the woman said. "Julian Cross is my father. Thomas Bell was mine too."
