Chapter 4 - Why Victor Needed the Trust
Victor confessed before Claire did.
He had debts.
Not ordinary debts.
$11 million.
Emma had no idea.
Victor's luxury investment firm had collapsed privately eighteen months earlier.
He hid it.
Borrowed.
Lost more.
Then someone approached him.
A man calling himself Daniel Crane.
Crane knew about W-17.
Knew Emma was an heir.
Knew Claire might be another.
He offered Victor a deal.
Get Emma to execute the transfer.
Victor's debts disappear.
He initially refused.
Then Crane showed photographs of Emma.
Leaving prenatal appointments.
Walking alone.
Sleeping through a bedroom window.
Victor became afraid.
At least that was what he claimed.
Emma stared through the interrogation-room glass.
“Did fear make him sleep with Claire too?”
Robert said nothing.
Victor admitted he approached Claire because Crane told him she was essential to the trust.
He was supposed to gain her confidence.
The affair developed afterward.
So Victor had betrayed Emma emotionally and financially.
But the blackmail operation existed independently of that betrayal.
Emma wanted those facts kept separate.
She would not let Victor use one crime to excuse another.
“Who is Daniel Crane?”
Police found no such person.
But Claire recognized the voice from a recording.
Her mother had received calls from the same man before dying.
Anna Bennett had spent decades hiding.
From whom?
Claire never knew.
Her mother's final months were filled with fear.
Locks changed.
Curtains closed.
One warning:
Never let Robert see the original birth certificate.
Claire produced it.
Father:
blank.
Mother:
Anna Bennett.
But underneath the paper, forensic light revealed erased typing.
GESTATIONAL CARRIER: ANNA BENNETT.
Genetic mother:
MIRIAM WHITMORE.
Genetic father:
ROBERT WHITMORE.
That solved Claire's biological origin.
Miriam created a second embryo using herself and Robert.
Anna carried it.
Claire was Emma's full biological sister.
Why hide her?
A letter supplied part of the answer.
Miriam believed someone inside W-17 intended to eliminate all heirs.
By separating the girls, she could protect one.
Emma would remain publicly visible.
Claire would disappear.
Robert stared at the letter.
“My wife used one daughter as a decoy.”
The realization hurt.
Miriam's plan was protective and monstrous at once.
Emma had been left exposed without consent.
Claire had been denied her family without consent.
Everyone kept deciding for children.
Then police located Daniel Crane.
His fingerprints on the restraint matched a dead man.
Thomas Whitmore.
Robert's younger brother.
Emma had never met him.
Robert told her Thomas died twenty-seven years earlier.
One year before Miriam.
Claire looked at him.
“Did you see his body too?”
May you like
Robert's expression changed.
“No.”
