Chapter 14 - The Face They Were Trying to Keep
Hartwell’s oldest assets were not songs.
They were likeness rights.
My grandmother had pioneered contracts involving performers’ faces, voices and identities long before modern digital licensing existed.
One protected archive remained sealed.
Access requirement:
A living descendant verified through biometric resemblance to Eleanor Hart.
Me.
My face.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The archive had been modernized years earlier with facial verification because my grandmother distrusted passwords and outside trustees.
If my face became permanently altered enough—
access could become legally and technically complicated.
Not impossible.
But delayed.
Disputed.
Potentially transferred to another verification structure.
Evelyn knew.
Christian learned.
Suddenly his words in the hospital carried a second meaning.
If she’s left scarred, even better.
Perhaps he meant dependency.
Perhaps he also knew harming my face could block me from something.
Christian was brought into questioning.
I confronted him through attorneys.
“Did you know about the biometric archive?”
He looked away.
“Yes.”
“Was that why you ordered the attack?”
“No.”
I waited.
He continued.
“I wanted you unable to appear at the wedding.”
“Why use Reese?”
“Because Gabriel gave me the name.”
Gabriel claimed my mother's old files did.
Another contradiction.
“Did you tell Reese where to hit me?”
Christian went pale.
“No.”
That answer came fast.
“What did you tell him?”
“To injure you enough to postpone everything.”
My stomach turned.
Still monstrous.
But different from specifying my face.
“So who told him?”
“I don't know.”
There it was.
The attack Christian ordered had been escalated by someone else.
A second betrayal inside the first.
We obtained Reese’s communications after his arrest overseas.
Christian’s initial instruction was criminal and horrifying.
But one later message redirected the attack:
Face. Make recognition difficult.
Sender:
Unknown encrypted account.
Payment supplement:
$250,000.
Not Christian.
Not Gabriel.
Not Evelyn.
Then Margaret found the source.
Hartwell Trust administrative reserve.
My own trust had funded the escalation.
Someone with trustee-level access wanted my face damaged.
My attorney paled.
Only three living people had that access.
Margaret.
Me.
And Caroline Hart’s surviving co-trustee.
A name I had never heard.
Dr. Henry Lawson.
The fertility doctor.
Everything stopped.
Lawson had not merely worked for the Prescotts.
He had been embedded in my family trust for twenty years.
Police searched his office.
They found the missing records.
Ana was alive.
Margaret’s files.
Donor logs.
And a video recorded by my mother before she died.
Caroline looked directly into the camera.
“If Genevieve is watching this, Henry betrayed me.”
A knock sounded behind us.
Lawson had escaped custody during a medical transfer.
Hospital security alarms activated.
Then the door opened.
Lawson stood there.
No weapon visible.
Just an old leather folder.
He looked at my bandaged face.
And started crying.
“You think I wanted this.”
I stepped backward.
“What do you want?”
“To tell you why your mother made me destroy your pregnancies.”
The room went silent.
Christian had confessed to causing them.
Lawson had denied it.
May you like
Now he was claiming my own mother ordered it.
And for the first time, I no longer knew which version of my grief was real.
