Chapter 3 - THE BURNED PAPERS The Blackwood mansion became a crime scene.
The grand rooms that had once hosted politicians and billionaires were now filled with investigators.
In Victor's private office, half-burned documents covered a steel table.
Lily recognized Ethan's medical records.
The first page contained medication schedules.
Dates.
Dosages.
Initials.
S.M.
Serena Montigue.
Then Lily saw another notation.
Increase before Victor returns.
Victor stared at it.
“Why?”
Lily answered quietly.
“Ethan cried more when Serena watched him.”
Victor's eyes hardened.
“If he was sedated…”
“He looked calm.”
The perfect fiancée.
The peaceful child.
The happy family.
All of it had been manufactured.
Then Marco found a behavioral report.
It described Ethan as aggressive and emotionally disturbed.
Lily almost laughed.
“He's fourteen months old.”
The report recommended a private pediatric residential program after Victor and Serena's wedding.
Victor stared at the page.
“A residential facility?”
“To remove him from the house,” Lily said.
“And from you.”
Silence.
Then came the financial records.
Serena had been paying Mrs. Vale forty thousand dollars a month.
The money came from Montigue Child Wellness.
A nonprofit partially funded by Blackwood charitable donations.
Victor had unknowingly financed the machine being used against his own family.
Then Marco opened another file.
Lily Carter.
Her address.
Her mother's medical records.
Her debts.
Her employment history.
A psychological profile.
High attachment to child. Financially vulnerable. Likely to resist physical discipline. Use mother's treatment as leverage.
Lily's stomach turned.
“They investigated me.”
Victor closed his eyes for a moment.
Then Marco found the most disturbing document.
PHASE TWO AFTER WEDDING
Remove nanny.
Transfer Ethan to private care.
Establish Serena as household authority.
Revise Blackwood family trust access.
Victor stopped reading.
The family trust was worth billions.
Then came another document.
Risk Event Scenarios
Travel accident.
Medical incapacity.
Federal detention.
Victor stared at the words.
“She wasn't planning to marry me.”
Lily looked at him.
“She was planning for something to happen to you.”
Then Marco found the final piece.
A photograph.
Serena inside an abandoned facility near Lake Geneva.
Beside her was a terrified woman tied to a chair.
Victor recognized her.
“Maya Torres.”
Ethan's former pediatric nurse.
The woman who had disappeared months earlier.
Then the photograph showed something else.
A child's drawing.
A woman.
A baby.
A black house.
And beneath it:
THE MOTHER COMES HOME AFTER THE WEDDING.
Victor looked up.
“What mother?”
Nobody answered.
Until an audio file was recovered.
A woman's voice.
Weak.
Terrified.
“Victor, if you hear this, Serena lied about the boat.”
Victor stopped breathing.
The voice belonged to Isabella.
His dead wife.
The woman he had mourned for years.
The woman whose body had supposedly been identified after the boating accident.
The recording ended.
May you like
Victor stared into the darkness.
His entire life had just become a lie.
