Chapter 5 - The Emails from Nia
The first email was dated eight months earlier.
Dad is getting worse.
We need to make sure Vincent can step in if I can’t handle everything.
It appeared to have been sent from Nia’s personal account to Vincent.
The second discussed Edward’s trust.
The third referenced Nia’s supposed depression.
The fourth contained a sentence that made her physically sick.
Sometimes I think it would be easier if Dad just passed peacefully before everything gets complicated.
Nia read it twice.
Then pushed the printed pages away.
“I never wrote these.”
Detective Bell nodded.
“We are treating that as a possibility.”
“A possibility?”
“We need evidence.”
“My husband just put my father in a coffin.”
“And that is evidence of a serious event. It doesn’t automatically authenticate or invalidate digital records.”
Nia hated the calmness of his answer because she knew he was right.
Edward watched from the hospital bed.
His communication device spoke.
“Check login history.”
Bell nodded.
“We’ve requested preservation records from the email provider.”
Nia paced.
“Vincent knew my passwords.”
Bell looked up.
“All of them?”
“We were married.”
The sentence sounded pathetic after she said it.
Edward’s eyes tightened.
Nia noticed.
“Don’t.”
He waited.
“Do not give me the I-told-you-so look.”
Edward selected words.
“I am sorry.”
Her anger disappeared.
She sat beside him.
“I know.”
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then Edward used the device.
“I failed you.”
Nia frowned.
“You’re lying in a hospital because of him.”
“I failed you first.”
“No.”
“I confused protection with control.”
Nia looked at him.
Edward continued.
“When your mother died, I decided I could prevent every future loss.”
Nia remembered being sixteen.
Her mother, Evelyn, had died from an aggressive cancer after only eleven months of treatment.
Edward had responded by becoming harder.
More structured.
More controlling.
College choices.
Jobs.
Money.
Boyfriends.
Everything required his opinion.
Vincent had been the first man who openly challenged him.
At twenty-five, Nia had mistaken defiance for strength.
Perhaps Vincent had understood that from the beginning.
“I hated the way you judged him,” she whispered.
Edward selected:
“I judged him before I had proof.”
“Yes.”
“I made it easier for him to tell you I was the enemy.”
Nia looked down.
That hurt because it was true.
Vincent had built intimacy through opposition.
Your father thinks he owns you.
Your father doesn’t respect your choices.
Your father uses money to control everyone.
Some of it had even been true.
That was the most dangerous kind of manipulation.
The kind built around pieces of reality.
Bell’s phone rang.
He stepped into the hall.
Nia looked at Edward.
“Why twenty-eight million?”
He answered.
“One trust segment.”
“What does it own?”
“Three commercial properties. Liquid reserves. Development rights.”
“Can Vincent access it?”
“Not while I am alive.”
“And if you died?”
“You become trustee.”
Nia swallowed.
“And if I were declared incapable?”
Edward’s answer appeared.
“A temporary successor could be appointed.”
“Vincent?”
“Not under my actual documents.”
“Then he forged those too.”
“Yes.”
Nia closed her eyes.
The plan was becoming visible.
Fake Edward’s death.
Produce a forged trust amendment.
Produce forged evidence that Nia had consented to Vincent’s authority.
Produce fake medical records suggesting she lacked capacity.
Then use the confusion immediately after Edward’s death to move money before anyone understood what had happened.
It was reckless.
But perhaps Vincent had never needed the fraud to survive permanently.
Maybe he only needed it to survive long enough.
Long enough to move millions.
Bell returned.
“We have preliminary login information.”
Nia stood.
“And?”
“The emails were sent from devices associated with your home network.”
Her heart dropped.
Vincent had expected that.
Bell continued.
“But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Several messages were sent when travel records show you were outside Connecticut.”
Nia remembered.
A conference in Chicago.
A weekend in Boston.
“Could Vincent have sent them?”
“We’re investigating.”
Nia felt sudden anger.
“He manufactured a marriage.”
Edward looked at her.
Not the marriage itself.
The evidence of one.
Vincent had prepared a future in which Nia would appear complicit in her father’s exploitation.
Bell placed another page on the table.
“This may matter more.”
It was a loan agreement.
North Harbor Development Partners.
Principal balance: $4,600,000.
Maturity date: ten days from now.
Nia scanned the page.
“If he doesn’t pay?”
“The lender can pursue pledged collateral.”
“What collateral?”
Bell pointed.
Nia read the description.
A personal guarantee.
Her name.
Her signature.
Again.
“No.”
Bell said, “You’re listed as guarantor.”
“I never guaranteed anything.”
“There’s more.”
He turned the page.
Attached was a schedule of assets supposedly available to satisfy the guarantee.
One line made Nia stop breathing.
Harrington Family Trust—anticipated beneficial interest.
She looked at Edward.
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Vincent had not merely wanted her inheritance.
He had already promised it to someone else.
