Chapter 13 - The Girl Who Signed
The addendum was dated when I was nineteen.
I remembered the summer vaguely: classes, an internship, my mother's exhausting negotiations with former investors.
I did not remember signing a settlement with Helena Vale.
Peter showed me the document under independent supervision.
My signature looked real.
The witness line was blank.
The notary stamp had been added in a different ink.
A faded calendar entry placed me at a summer course in another state on the day the document claimed I attended the signing.
The evidence was not conclusive, but it made forgery a serious possibility.
I asked why the settlement mattered now.
Peter explained that it purported to give Helena a contingent claim against assets eventually transferred to me.
A claim so broad that any honest lawyer would have questioned it.
My mother had never acknowledged such a provision in subsequent records.
The document had remained unmentioned until now.
Julian had been using it as a threat because he believed I would sacrifice Aurelia rather than risk a public dispute over my inheritance.
I refused to give him that choice.
We engaged forensic document specialists and filed a limited challenge through counsel.
Meanwhile Nathan Cole finally met investigators.
He admitted making accounting entries under pressure from Julian and Helena's representatives.
He said he had initially believed the payments were authorized financing fees.
When he realized the records were deceptive, he tried to leave.
Then someone threatened to accuse him of taking the money himself.
He had kept a complete archive, including approval chains and communications.
His testimony implicated several people but also exposed his own misconduct.
He understood that cooperation did not guarantee immunity.
I respected him more for saying so.
Among his documents was a transfer schedule showing that the next payment from Aurelia would fund a deposit on selected intellectual property.
The buyer was an entity controlled by Helena.
The transaction had been planned for the day after the rescue financing was due to fail.
They had expected Aurelia to collapse.
Northstar's investment had interrupted their script.
I stared at the schedule and finally saw the shape of the plot.
Helena wanted the valuable technology without the employees, the debts, or the obligations.
Julian wanted a presidency in the company that remained, or a lucrative position in whatever bought its assets.
Camilla wanted the life Julian had promised.
And I had been the obstacle they assumed could be manipulated through marriage.
At midnight, my attorneys called with the document examiner's initial result.
The signature on the nineteen-year-old addendum showed a pattern inconsistent with my verified signatures of that year.
It might be a skilled imitation.
Then they added a more surprising detail.
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The paper itself had not been manufactured until six years after the supposed signing.
