Chapter 2 - Thomas Vale’s Second Son
Richard spent the next ten minutes saying the test was fake.
The priest eventually asked him to step away from the grave.
He refused.
Two cemetery employees and Grant finally moved between us while my rehabilitation nurse, Olivia Brooks, helped get me out of the mud using a stabilization board someone fetched from the grounds vehicle.
I hated every second of being lifted.
Not because I needed help.
Because Richard watched as if needing assistance proved every insult he had made.
Once I was seated in my wheelchair beside Dad’s coffin, Aunt Eleanor came to me.
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
That was Eleanor.
She had survived two husbands, three recessions, breast cancer, and ninety years of Vale men confusing volume with authority.
She looked at the DNA report again.
“Your father told me he suspected this.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Samuel asked me not to.”
Of course.
Dad loved information almost as much as he hated sharing it before the right moment.
Richard marched toward us.
“This changes nothing.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“Biologically? Perhaps not.”
His expression tightened.
That was not the answer he expected.
She continued.
“Thomas raised you. Thomas publicly acknowledged you. Your parentage does not make you less human or erase the years he acted as your father.”
I watched Richard’s shoulders loosen slightly.
Then Eleanor delivered the rest.
“But you made bloodline a legal issue yourself.”
Twenty-two years earlier, after Thomas Vale died, Richard challenged distributions from the Thomas Vale Descendants Trust. He accused two cousins of not being legitimate descendants and demanded genetic verification before they could receive money.
It was ugly.
Dad opposed him.
Richard won the procedural fight.
The trust was amended through settlement to require verified descent for certain bloodline-only legacy distributions.
Everyone claiming from that particular trust thereafter had to establish biological descent from Thomas or his acknowledged children under the agreed terms.
Including Richard.
His first test had shown him as Thomas’s son.
Now the retest contradicted it.
“How?” Grant asked quietly.
Eleanor looked toward Richard.
“That is the important question.”
Dad’s second envelope contained the original laboratory record from twenty-two years earlier.
And a second page.
Chain-of-custody log.
The sample attributed to Richard Vale had not been collected directly from Richard.
It had been substituted after collection.
The technician who signed the transfer?
Martin Creel.
Everyone turned toward Dad’s executor.
Martin’s face went gray.
Richard snapped:
“This is nonsense.”
Martin whispered, “Richard.”
“Shut up.”
Bad choice.
Aunt Eleanor heard it.
So did half the cemetery.
I looked at Martin.
“My father knew?”
Martin said nothing.
The answer came from the next document.
Dad had hired an independent forensic lab to re-examine the old test after a retired technician contacted him.
The technician remembered Martin arriving after hours claiming one of the samples had been mislabeled.
She allowed him access because he worked for the Vale family legal office.
The replacement sample matched Thomas’s biological line.
The current analysis of Richard’s stored medical sample did not.
Grant stared at his father.
“Who was the substitute sample from?”
Richard’s jaw hardened.
I opened another page.
Samuel Vale.
My father.
Richard had substituted my father’s DNA for his own.
Twenty-two years earlier, my uncle had used his brother’s genetic material to prove he belonged to a bloodline trust.
That was fraud.
Not because there was anything shameful about having another biological father.
Because Richard had lied under oath and manipulated evidence to take money while demanding biological proof from everyone else.
“How much?” Grant asked.
Eleanor answered.
“Approximately $6.8 million over twenty-two years.”
Richard looked at her sharply.
“That money was mine. Dad raised me.”
“Then you could have argued that honestly.”
She tapped the DNA report.
“You did not.”
Martin finally sat down on one of the funeral chairs as though his knees had failed.
I looked at him.
“And yesterday you filed a new probate petition claiming Dad left Richard Vale Industrial.”
Martin closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“Was the amendment genuine?”
He did not answer.
Richard did.
“Of course it was.”
I reached for the second sealed envelope from my coat.
Dad had written one word across it.
MARTIN.
May you like
The executor stared at his own name.
And for the first time, he looked more frightened of a dead man than of Richard.
