CHAPTER 25 — THE FIRSTBORN HEIR
Claire did not look away from Margaret.
“Both.”
Margaret smiled.
“That answer has caused this family more trouble than you can imagine.”
Daniel stepped toward the glass chamber.
“Let Father go.”
“Your father has been free to speak for years.”
Charles tried to remove the mask.
Margaret pressed a control.
The medical chair restrained his arms.
“He simply never had an audience powerful enough to save him.”
Gabriel stared at Charles.
“You knew I was alive.”
Charles’s eyes filled with tears.
“Yes.”
“And you left me with her.”
“No.”
His voice was weak beneath the mask.
“I tried to bring you home.”
Margaret laughed.
“He sent lawyers. Investigators. Men who believed money could repair a child whose own family had denied his existence.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
Claire saw Margaret watching him carefully.
She was trying to turn him again.
“Gabriel,” Claire said, “she is doing what she has always done.”
“Stay out of this.”
“She gives you one piece of truth and surrounds it with ten lies.”
Margaret’s expression hardened.
She tightened the wire around Noah’s wrist again.
“Give me the ring.”
Claire held it out.
“Release the wire first.”
“The ring first.”
Victoria stepped toward the control panel.
Margaret aimed a pistol at her.
“You have disappointed me enough tonight.”
Victoria stopped.
“You ordered Evelyn Bennett’s death.”
“And you obeyed.”
“I believed she was taking the child to Charles’s enemies.”
“You believed whatever allowed you to sleep.”
Victoria lowered her eyes.
Claire looked at Charles.
“Why does Margaret need the ring if the archive is already open?”
Charles pointed toward the storage chip.
“Names are encrypted.”
Margaret spoke over him.
“The archive contains evidence against more than four hundred people. But Charles hid the decryption code inside Daniel’s ring.”
Claire looked at the tiny chip.
“And the children?”
“The family trust,” Charles said. “Elias was born four minutes before Noah.”
Margaret’s face became cold.
“Which makes Elias the firstborn heir.”
Daniel looked at Elias.
“If his birth becomes public, he controls the voting trust when he turns twenty-five.”
“No,” Charles said. “Both boys do.”
Margaret turned toward him.
Charles continued.
“I changed it.”
“When?”
“The night Evelyn found me.”
Claire looked at the wooden bird.
Her mother had reached Charles before she died.
Charles had learned Elias was alive.
“I divided the trust,” Charles said. “Neither brother can control the family alone.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
Charles had done for his grandsons what he had failed to do for his sons.
Margaret raised the pistol toward Elias.
“Then the trust returns to one heir if the other child dies.”
Daniel moved in front of the boy.
Margaret’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Gabriel stepped between them.
“Shoot me first.”
Margaret stared at him.
“You would protect Daniel’s child?”
Gabriel looked at Elias.
“He is my brother’s son.”
Margaret’s expression changed.
For the first time, she understood that she had lost Gabriel.
Noah suddenly kicked the medical cart beside him.
The cart struck Margaret’s arm.
The pistol fired.
The glass wall shattered.
May you like
Charles’s monitor began sounding an alarm.
And Gabriel fell to the floor.
