Chapter 5 - Olivia's Locked Box)
Ethan did not leave Seabrook House that night.
He hated the decision.
But Beatrice's words had opened a question he could not ignore.
Nora agreed to stay with Noah in the east guest suite while Ethan searched Olivia's belongings.
Most of them were still packed in storage.
After Olivia died, Ethan had been unable to decide what to keep.
Beatrice had offered to handle it.
Now he wondered what she had removed.
At eleven thirty, Ethan entered a basement storage room with Nora.
Boxes covered two walls.
They found Olivia's name on six.
Clothes.
Books.
Photographs.
Medical paperwork.
Nothing unusual.
Then Nora noticed an empty space on the shelf.
"There was another box."
Ethan turned.
"What box?"
"A small wooden one."
"What was in it?"
"I don't know."
"Where is it?"
Nora shook her head.
"I thought you took it."
Ethan felt anger rise again.
He searched Beatrice's office.
Nothing.
Her bedroom.
Nothing.
At one in the morning, he remembered the old wine cellar.
Beatrice rarely drank wine.
Charles had.
Ethan descended the narrow stone steps.
Behind a row of empty wooden cases was a metal lockbox.
He dragged it forward.
Olivia's initials were scratched into one corner.
O.L.
The lock required four numbers.
Ethan tried Noah's birthday.
Wrong.
Their wedding date.
Wrong.
Olivia's birthday.
Wrong.
Then he remembered a small joke between them.
Olivia always said their real anniversary was not the day they married.
It was the day they met.
June 18.
618.
The lock clicked.
Inside were photographs.
Bank records.
A flash drive.
And a sealed paternity laboratory envelope.
Ethan stared at it.
His chest tightened.
Noah Alexander Langley.
He opened it.
The result showed a probability of paternity below one percent.
Ethan stopped breathing.
For several seconds he could not understand the page.
Then the room seemed to tilt.
Noah was not his son.
He read it again.
Below one percent.
His hands began shaking.
"No."
The word came out quietly.
He sat on the stone floor.
Images flashed through his mind.
Olivia laughing.
Olivia pregnant.
Noah in the hospital.
The first time Ethan held him.
Beatrice saying her son.
Had Olivia cheated on him?
Was that why she had been afraid?
Was Charles protecting Noah because he knew Ethan was not the father?
Ethan nearly missed the small handwritten note attached to the laboratory report.
It was written in Olivia's handwriting.
Ethan, this report is fake.
He stared at the sentence.
There was more.
I found it in Beatrice's desk. She commissioned it using Noah's name. I had a second test performed independently. Rebecca has the original.
Ethan closed his eyes.
Relief hit so hard it almost hurt.
Then fury replaced it.
His mother had fabricated a paternity result.
Why?
To remove Noah.
To disinherit him.
To separate Ethan from his own child.
Ethan grabbed his phone.
Rebecca answered despite the hour.
"Tell me you have another paternity test."
Silence.
Then, "You found Olivia's box."
"Tell me."
"Yes."
"And?"
"You are Noah's biological father. Probability greater than 99.99 percent."
Ethan pressed his hand against the wall.
"Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"Olivia asked us not to until Charles finished investigating."
"She died before that happened."
"Yes."
"And then my father died."
"Yes."
Ethan's voice hardened.
"My mother forged a paternity report."
"She paid a private laboratory consultant to create one using incomplete samples."
"That's fraud."
"Potentially."
"Potentially?"
"We need to prove intent."
Ethan looked inside the box.
"What else did Olivia find?"
"Transfers. Shell companies. Copies of correspondence."
"Why did my father change the trust?"
"Because Olivia discovered Beatrice was preparing to use the false paternity report after Charles died."
Ethan understood.
"If she convinced me Noah wasn't mine, I'd walk away from him."
"That was the assumption."
"And then she could challenge his trust rights."
"Yes."
Ethan's mouth went dry.
"She was planning this while Olivia was alive."
"Yes."
He looked at the flash drive.
"What is on this?"
"I don't know."
"Olivia never gave it to you?"
"No."
Ethan inserted it into an old laptop in the cellar.
One folder appeared.
BEATRICE.
Inside were twelve audio recordings.
Ethan clicked the first.
His mother's voice filled the cellar.
"If Ethan believes the boy belongs to someone else, he will do what men like him always do. He will disappear."
A man's voice answered.
"And if he doesn't?"
Beatrice replied calmly.
"Then we make sure the trust never reaches the child."
Ethan froze.
He knew the man's voice.
It belonged to Malcolm Reed.
The former chief financial officer of Langley Harbor Holdings.
A man Ethan had fired two years earlier for unexplained accounting discrepancies.
The recording continued.
Malcolm asked, "What about Olivia?"
Beatrice answered.
"Olivia is becoming inconvenient."
The file ended.
Ethan stared at the screen.
His phone rang.
Nora.
He answered immediately.
"Ethan."
Her voice was panicked.
"What?"
"Noah is gone."
Ethan was already running.
"What do you mean gone?"
"Beatrice came into the room. She said you told her to take him."
"I didn't."
"I know. I went after her, but she locked the connecting door."
"Where is she?"
"I don't know."
Ethan reached the main corridor.
Then he heard Noah crying.
Above him.
Near the grand staircase.
He looked up.
Beatrice stood at the top landing.
May you like
Noah was beside her.
And Beatrice had one hand on the child's shoulder.
