Chapter 6 - THE LETTER FOR THE BABY
Carol didn't answer immediately.
Cole noticed her hands.
They were trembling.
Emily sat again.
“Tell me.”
Carol nodded.
“My father's estate wasn't left entirely to me.”
“What does that mean?”
“He created a trust.”
“For who?”
Carol looked at Emily's stomach.
“For his granddaughter.”
Emily instinctively covered her belly.
Cole stepped closer.
“My daughter?”
Carol nodded.
“Partly.”
Emily frowned.
“My grandfather didn't even know me.”
“He knew about you.”
“How?”
“I told him.”
Carol explained that she had reconnected with her father six years earlier.
Their relationship had been difficult.
Slow.
But eventually, she had told him everything.
Richard.
The hospital.
The baby she believed had died.
Then, three years ago, Carol discovered through a genealogy database that Emily was alive.
Emily stared at her.
“Three years?”
Cole's expression sharpened.
“You've known for three years?”
Carol nodded.
“Why didn't you contact me?”
“I tried.”
Richard's warning suddenly echoed through the room.
Ask Carol why she waited until you were pregnant.
Carol reached into the envelope.
She removed several printed emails.
Emily read them.
They were addressed to an account she had used years earlier.
The messages were simple.
My name is Carol Bennett.
I believe I may be connected to your biological family.
Please contact me.
Emily looked up.
“I never saw these.”
Carol nodded.
“They were blocked.”
“By who?”
“I don't know.”
Cole took the pages.
“Did Richard have access to this account?”
Emily's face changed.
“He set it up for me when I was sixteen.”
Cole exhaled.
Carol continued.
“I sent letters.”
“They came back.”
“I called.”
“Numbers changed.”
“Eventually, I hired an investigator.”
Emily looked toward her.
“He found me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn't you come?”
Carol looked ashamed.
“Richard contacted me first.”
Silence.
“He told me you knew everything.”
Emily stared at her.
“He said you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Carol's voice cracked.
“He sent me a letter with your signature.”
“I never wrote anything.”
“I know that now.”
Cole's jaw tightened.
Carol continued.
“Then your grandfather became sick.”
“He rewrote his trust.”
“He left a portion to you.”
“How much?”
Carol hesitated.
“Approximately six million dollars.”
Emily stared at her.
Cole didn't react to the number.
He reacted to Carol's hesitation.
“And?”
Carol looked at him.
“What aren't you saying?”
Carol swallowed.
“The trust contains a condition.”
Emily waited.
“If Emily died before receiving it, the money would pass to her surviving child.”
Cole's entire posture changed.
Emily slowly placed both hands over her stomach.
Carol continued quickly.
“That doesn't mean Richard would hurt you.”
Cole looked at her.
“You don't believe that.”
Carol fell silent.
Emily whispered.
“Why would Dad care?”
“Because Richard was named trustee.”
The room went completely still.
Cole understood before Emily did.
“If Emily receives the trust?”
Carol nodded.
“She controls it.”
“And if something happens to her before that?”
“The trust remains under Richard's management for the child until adulthood.”
Emily stared at the closed front door.
Her father hadn't simply been hiding the past.
There was money attached to the future.
May you like
And for the first time that night, Cole wondered whether those scratches on Emily's arm had really come from an argument that got out of control.
Or whether Richard had been trying to stop her from discovering something far more dangerous.
