Chapter 6 - Edwin Knew
The storage unit belonged to a logistics subsidiary Hart Meridian acquired five years earlier.
Before that, it belonged to Sterling Logistics.
Edwin could have rented it when the company was still his.
Inside:
Financial ledgers.
A locked briefcase.
One old laptop.
And a video camera.
Edwin Sterling had recorded himself three days before his fatal stroke.
He looked tired.
Scared.
“Lucas, if you ever see this, it means your mother didn’t tell you.”
Lucas watched beside me.
Edwin continued:
“Margot believes the family trust belongs to the Sterlings. It doesn’t.”
Lucas frowned.
The Preservation Trust had originally been funded by Edwin’s mother.
Beatrice Sterling.
But Beatrice inherited most of her wealth from another family.
The Harts.
I stared.
My surname.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
Edwin said:
“Beatrice’s father was Samuel Hart.”
My grandfather was Daniel Hart.
Samuel Hart was his older brother.
That made Edwin’s mother and my father first cousins.
Lucas and I were distantly related through an old family branch.
Not closely.
Not meaningfully for marriage.
But financially, the connection mattered.
The Preservation Trust had a reversion clause favoring Samuel Hart’s descendants if the Sterling line failed.
When Hart Meridian acquired Sterling & Co., Edwin investigated me.
He discovered Evelyn Hart was a Samuel Hart descendant through another line.
He knew I controlled the company.
He also knew I was dating Lucas.
He said nothing.
Why?
He wanted to know what I wanted.
For almost two years, Edwin watched.
I invested in Sterling & Co.
Restructured debt.
Saved jobs.
Never used my relationship with Lucas to alter corporate decisions.
Edwin eventually approved of me.
Then he did something extraordinary.
He amended the Preservation Trust.
Upon birth of Lucas’s first biological child, control would pass to Lucas.
But an independent protector would be appointed.
Name:
Evelyn Hart.
I stared.
“I never accepted that.”
Because no one told me.
Edwin had nominated me without informing me.
Why?
“If Lucas becomes like me,” Edwin said on video, “stop him.”
Lucas looked away.
Then Edwin addressed Margot.
“If you are watching this, Margot, I know about Marian.”
Silence.
Margot and Marian had been moving family funds for years.
Not just to Helix.
To cover old losses in a medical-data venture Edwin opposed.
He planned to remove Margot as trustee.
Then he died.
Natural stroke.
Medical records confirmed.
No murder.
No poisoning.
Just terrible timing.
But before his death, Edwin told Margot to move certain Preservation Trust funds temporarily.
Why?
He feared creditors connected to Sterling & Co.’s collapse.
He wanted assets moved into protected structures.
Margot followed those instructions initially.
Years later, she used the same mechanism for Marian.
That explained the anonymous message:
Margot moved $12 million because Edwin ordered her to.
Half true.
Edwin created the method.
He did not authorize this transfer.
Then the video ended with one sentence:
“Do not trust Marian Cross with genetic records.”
Lucas and I looked at each other.
Edwin knew about Helix before he died.
Why?
Because Marian had used the company to investigate another child.
Not Lucas.
Not the twins.
A girl named Sophie Sterling.
Lucas whispered:
“Who is Sophie?”
Gideon searched.
Birth record.
Age seventeen.
Mother:
Marian Cross.
Father:
Edwin Sterling.
Lucas stood up.
“My father had a child with his sister?”
No.
Thankfully.
The birth record listed Marian as mother because she was legal guardian.
Biological mother:
Unknown.
Biological father:
Edwin Sterling.
May you like
Lucas had a seventeen-year-old half-sister.
And Margot had known about her since birth.
