Chapter 13 - FRIDAY IS COMING
Celeste laughed when we told her.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes the truth becomes so absurd there is nothing left to do.
“I don’t own Blackstone.”
“Legally, you may control the certificate.”
“I was twenty-seven when Evelyn died.”
“She transferred Wren to you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You signed dissolution papers.”
“Malcolm’s office prepared them.”
Mara looked at her.
“What did you think they were?”
“Final employment settlement.”
Nathan almost smiled.
“Apparently I’m not the only idiot.”
Celeste stared at him.
“No.”
“You were just the richest one.”
He stopped smiling.
The court hearing on my competency was scheduled for two that afternoon.
Fast.
Too fast.
Malcolm had prepared everything.
Doctors I had never met submitted declarations.
A former therapist quoted sessions from college.
Private emails described grief after my mother’s death.
Ordinary sadness transformed into evidence of instability.
And then there was the jewelry incident.
Malcolm’s lawyers submitted the edited clip.
I watched myself appear angry.
Cold.
Threatening.
Without the preceding assault, I looked unpredictable.
Then Mara played the full video.
Nathan slapped me once.
Then again.
Silence in the courtroom.
Nathan sat behind his attorney.
He did not look away.
When the judge asked whether he disputed the footage, Nathan stood.
“No, Your Honor.”
His attorney grabbed his sleeve.
Nathan continued.
“I struck my wife twice.”
The courtroom changed.
“I had no justification.”
Malcolm’s attorney objected.
Nathan ignored him.
“The video submitted by Mr. Voss’s counsel was deliberately incomplete.”
The judge looked furious.
Good.
Nathan’s confession did not erase what he had done.
But it destroyed Malcolm’s strongest evidence.
Then Mara presented the dead notary.
The forged proxy.
The false psychiatric reports.
The pattern of manipulated documents.
At 4:17, the judge refused to declare me incompetent.
But he did not fully release the shares.
Because the proxy dispute remained pending.
My voting conversion would occur Friday morning under court supervision.
Sixteen hours.
Malcolm had lost one path.
He still had others.
When we left the courthouse, reporters were waiting.
Somebody had leaked Adrian’s return.
“Emma, is your father alive?”
“Mr. Ashford, where have you been?”
“Is Nathan Cole facing criminal charges?”
“Is Blackstone being sold?”
“Did Evelyn Ashford fake her husband’s death?”
Our secrets were becoming public.
Malcolm wanted that.
Chaos lowered company value.
A falling stock price made restructuring easier to justify.
By evening, Ashford Meridian debt instruments were dropping.
Business channels ran old footage of my father’s funeral beside new photographs of him.
Aurelia stores received cancellations.
Nathan’s board allies panicked.
At 7:00, the company bank called.
Covenant review.
At 8:00, a major lender requested emergency information.
At 9:15, Blackstone’s overseas partners demanded assurance that Friday’s renewal would proceed.
We were running out of time.
Then Celeste disappeared again.
This time she didn’t stage it.
Her phone remained on Mara’s desk.
Her coat hung over a chair.
The security camera showed her leaving through the stairwell at 8:42.
Alone.
Why?
We found the answer in Nathan’s inbox.
An email sent from Malcolm.
SUBJECT: LAURA.
Attached was a photograph of Nathan’s mother.
And a document.
Her death certificate.
Nathan stared.
“She died of cancer.”
“So?”
I asked.
He scrolled.
A second report.
Private pathology.
Toxicology.
Medication irregularities.
“What is that?”
Mara asked.
Nathan’s hands shook.
“My mother wasn’t getting the medication her doctor prescribed.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Someone changed it.”
“Who had access?”
Nathan whispered.
“Malcolm’s foundation paid for her care.”
His father.
Watching again.
Controlling again.
Malcolm’s message contained one sentence.
CELESTE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED.
Nathan looked at me.
“She left because of this.”
“To meet Malcolm?”
“Or to find proof.”
At 10:30, Grant called.
“I know where she’ll go.”
“Where?”
“Evelyn’s old apartment.”
“My mother’s townhouse?”
“No.”
Grant gave an address in Brooklyn Heights.
I had never heard of it.
“Mom had an apartment?”
“Safe house.”
Of course.
We arrived at eleven.
The apartment had been untouched for years.
Celeste stood in the center of the living room holding a file.
Nathan walked toward her.
“What happened to my mother?”
Celeste looked devastated.
“I don’t know.”
“You knew about the medication.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After she died.”
“Did Malcolm do it?”
“I couldn’t prove it.”
“Then why tell Evelyn?”
“Because your mother was trying to contact her.”
Nathan froze.
“What?”
“Laura found Evelyn two months before she died.”
“Why?”
“She discovered Malcolm was your father.”
Nathan looked like someone had removed the floor beneath him.
“She knew?”
“Yes.”
“What did she want?”
“To warn Emma.”
I stared.
“Me?”
Celeste nodded.
“Laura realized Malcolm had been steering Nathan toward the Ashfords.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“She tried to stop it.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Evelyn met her here.”
Celeste lifted an old recorder.
“I found this tonight.”
We played it.
Laura’s voice.
Weak.
“Your daughter is in danger.”
My mother.
“From Nathan?”
“No.”
“From Malcolm.”
Laura coughed.
“Nathan doesn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“That Malcolm is his father.”
Silence.
Then Evelyn.
“Does Malcolm know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Laura.
“He has been shaping Nathan since childhood.”
“I know.”
That answer stunned us.
My mother already knew.
Laura continued.
“He wants Nathan close to Emma.”
Evelyn.
“I know that too.”
Nathan looked at me.
Neither of us breathed.
Then Laura asked the question that mattered.
“Then why haven’t you stopped them from meeting?”
My mother’s answer changed everything.
“Because Malcolm believes Nathan is his weapon.”
Pause.
“I need Nathan close enough to become his weakness.”
I stared at the recorder.
My mother had allowed Nathan into my life deliberately.
Not because she didn’t know.
Because she did.
She had used my future marriage as part of her counterattack.
Rage rose inside me.
“She used me.”
Adrian stood behind me.
“Yes.”
I turned.
“You knew?”
His silence was enough.
“You knew she let Nathan near me.”
“Later.”
“When?”
“Before the wedding.”
My vision blurred.
“And you did nothing.”
“I begged her to stop it.”
“But you stayed dead.”
“Yes.”
I laughed.
A sharp, broken sound.
“My parents sacrificed my life to beat Malcolm.”
“No.”
“That is exactly what you did.”
Adrian stepped toward me.
I stepped back.
Nathan looked destroyed too.
For once, we stood on the same side of betrayal.
Celeste lifted another page.
“There is more.”
I almost screamed.
Of course there was more.
Laura had written a statement before she died.
She described Malcolm’s biological relationship to Nathan.
His surveillance.
His financial manipulation.
And a conversation she overheard.
Malcolm planned to use Nathan’s marriage to Emma.
But not forever.
Once Emma’s twenty-ninth birthday transferred control, Malcolm intended to destroy the marriage publicly.
Force Emma into litigation.
Trigger the trust’s dispute clauses.
Then seize Blackstone.
The affair.
Celeste.
The forged proxy.
The jewelry store confrontation.
All part of a final destabilization.
Except one thing.
Malcolm had not ordered Nathan to hit me.
Nathan did that himself.
That mattered.
Manipulation explained him.
It did not excuse him.
Near the bottom of Laura’s statement was another detail.
A bank account.
Payments from Malcolm.
Recipient.
Dr. Peter Lang.
The physician who treated my mother during her final illness.
Celeste looked at me.
“We need to know whether Evelyn died from what we were told.”
My mother had supposedly died from pancreatic cancer.
But Laura’s medication had been altered.
And the same man who funded Laura’s medical care had maintained a financial relationship with my mother’s doctor.
Friday was less than nine hours away.
And suddenly I had to consider a possibility worse than every lie before it.
May you like
Maybe Malcolm hadn’t only tried to kill my father.
Maybe he had successfully killed my mother.
