Chapter 5 - THE VISIT DAMON CLAIMED NEVER HAPPENED.
Anna’s voicemail was weak but clear.
“Claire, Damon came with a woman in black. They want the original trust page. Do not sign anything.”
Vanessa stopped pretending.
She reached for the phone, but an investigator blocked her.
Claire looked at Damon.
“You stood in my mother’s room while telling me she was dead?”
Damon’s face tightened.
“She was confused. Vanessa said the file could destroy the company.”
Vanessa snapped, “Do not put this on me. You wanted Claire’s signature before the anniversary deadline.”
The betrayal between them surfaced in one sentence.
Claire understood at last.
Damon had not attacked her in anger.
He and Vanessa were racing against a legal deadline.
Anna possessed the original page of a family trust created by Damon’s grandmother, Eleanor Hale.
That page transferred thirty percent of Hale Domestic Holdings to the employees who built and maintained the family estates.
Claire, as Anna’s legal heir, had authority to activate it.
Damon needed her signature on a waiver before midnight.
Vanessa mocked the trust.
“Drivers and maids cannot manage commercial property.”
Rosa answered, “We managed the houses, the schedules, the illnesses, and the children. Your family only managed our names off the paperwork.”
Damon offered Claire a settlement.
Ten million dollars if she signed and withdrew the recording.
Claire looked at the bruise he had left above her eye.
“You still think the price is the part that offended me.”
Then the investigator checked the time.
It was 11:43 p.m.
May you like
Seventeen minutes remained before the trust deadline.
But the original page was still inside the private clinic.
