Chapter 7 - THE SON WAITING FOR A SCAPEGOAT.
Charles entered the bedroom smiling until he saw Evelyn awake.
He turned on Emily first.
“This is what happens when servants mistake access for equality.”
Emily stood beside Evelyn.
“My mother worked for this family for nineteen years. You used her numbers, took her pension, and called her dishonest when she noticed.”
Charles shrugged.
“She was paid to keep records, not question strategy.”
Richard’s anger finally surfaced.
“You were going to frame Emily for drugging two women?”
Charles answered without shame.
“She has debt, no influential relatives, and a dead mother with a damaged reputation. Who would believe her over us?”
That sentence exposed the entire plan.
Emily had been chosen not because she was guilty, but because the family believed poverty made guilt believable.
Evelyn ordered the trust transfer canceled.
Charles laughed.
“You no longer control the board.”
Richard opened the black folder.
Inside were proxy votes from directors who received private development shares.
Every vote had been purchased.
Victoria called them incentives.
Emily called them bribes.
Then Margaret appeared in the doorway, supported by a paramedic.
She pointed at Charles.
“You did this before.”
Twenty years earlier, he had used the same doctor and the same guardianship strategy to remove her from the family.
May you like
Margaret then handed Richard a sealed photograph.
It showed Charles beside Emily’s mother on the night she died.
