Chapter 4 - The Heir Nobody Knew Existed
Mila was sitting at a bakery table when Clarissa found her.
There had been no dramatic abduction.
No violence.
Clarissa simply entered after closing and showed Mila documents bearing Nadia’s name.
She told her Nadia had been injured.
Terrified, Mila followed.
That was the story Mila later told them.
But Nadia did not know it yet.
All she knew was that her sister was with Clarissa.
Dragan’s people located Clarissa’s car near a private waterfront hotel owned by Merrill Holdings.
Dragan, Nadia and Theodore arrived shortly before dawn.
“No confrontation,” Dragan told Theodore.
Theodore looked at him.
“She has my sister.”
The word surprised all three of them.
My sister.
Theodore had known Mila for years only as Nadia’s younger sibling.
Now blood connected them.
But Nadia understood something before he did.
Blood was not enough.
If Theodore wanted to become Mila’s family, he would have to earn it.
They found Clarissa in a private dining room overlooking the water.
Mila sat beside the window.
Unhurt.
Confused.
When she saw Nadia, she stood immediately.
“Nadia!”
Nadia ran to her.
The sisters embraced.
For several seconds, nothing else mattered.
Then Mila noticed Theodore.
Clarissa smiled.
“Tell her.”
Nadia turned.
“Not here.”
“She deserves the truth.”
Clarissa slid documents across the table.
Mila read them.
Her expression changed.
She looked at Theodore.
Then Nadia.
“What is this?”
Nadia took her hands.
“It looks like Augustus Hawthorne may have been your biological father.”
Mila stared.
“The man in the portrait?”
“Yes.”
Mila stepped away.
“No.”
Theodore spoke gently.
“I didn’t know.”
Mila looked at him.
“You paid for my surgery.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know then?”
“No.”
Clarissa laughed.
“Touching.”
Dragan finally addressed her.
“Why were you watching Mila?”
Clarissa’s smile vanished.
“My father told me about Elena before he died.”
She walked toward the window.
“He spent his final years terrified that the Voskin woman had kept evidence.”
“So you paid for Mila’s surgery?” Nadia asked.
“I reimbursed it.”
“Why?”
“Because medical procedures create records. Records create addresses.”
Nadia felt disgusted.
“You used my sister’s surgery to find us.”
Clarissa shrugged.
“I needed to know whether Elena had left anything behind.”
“And when you realized I worked for Theodore?”
“I couldn’t believe my luck.”
Clarissa had not fallen accidentally into Theodore’s world.
She had researched him.
Met him at a charity event.
Made herself indispensable.
Then accepted his proposal.
Theodore stared at her.
“Was any of it real?”
Clarissa hesitated.
That hesitation hurt him more than an immediate no would have.
“Some of it.”
“But not enough.”
“No.”
Theodore removed his engagement ring and placed it on the table.
Clarissa watched it.
Then her expression hardened.
“You think Nadia is innocent?”
Nadia frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your mother didn’t simply discover the documents.”
Clarissa reached into her purse.
Dragan moved slightly.
Clarissa stopped.
“It’s paper.”
She removed an old photograph.
Elena stood beside Augustus Hawthorne.
They were smiling.
Close.
Too close.
Mila stared.
Clarissa placed another photograph down.
Then another.
“Elena and Augustus were in love.”
Theodore closed his eyes.
Clarissa continued.
“Augustus wanted to leave his marriage. Elena refused. She knew what would happen to her daughters if the Hawthorne family turned against them.”
Nadia’s understanding of her mother shifted beneath her feet.
Elena had carried secrets Nadia had never imagined.
“But that doesn’t explain the fire,” Nadia said.
“No,” Clarissa replied. “This does.”
She produced a photocopy of a letter.
Augustus had threatened Conrad Merrill.
If the locked exits were not opened and conditions improved, Augustus would expose everything.
Conrad responded by threatening to reveal Mila’s parentage.
Then came the fire.
“Your father caused it?” Theodore asked.
Clarissa shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who?”
“That’s the problem.”
Clarissa looked toward Dragan.
“My father insisted until the day he died that someone else ordered those doors locked.”
Dragan’s expression did not change.
Clarissa smiled faintly.
“Someone Elena trusted.”
Nadia turned toward him.
“No.”
Dragan remained silent.
Clarissa placed one final page on the table.
It contained a signature authorizing security changes at the factory.
D. Kovac.
Nadia looked at Dragan.
“You said you tried to save her.”
“I did.”
“Did you work for them?”
Dragan’s silence answered before his words did.
“Yes.”
Nadia stepped backward.
Dragan had been twenty-four.
Poor.
Ambitious.
Working around the docks for men whose businesses existed in shadows.
Conrad Merrill had hired his crew for security work.
“I signed the work order,” Dragan said.
“You locked those doors?”
“No.”
“You signed it!”
“I authorized replacement locks on storage rooms. Someone altered the order afterward.”
Nadia’s eyes filled.
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t.”
Dragan did not defend himself.
“You shouldn’t trust me because I tell you to.”
That answer stopped her.
“Trust evidence.”
Clarissa laughed.
“How convenient.”
Dragan looked at her.
“That’s why you wanted the box.”
Clarissa’s smile disappeared.
“Because the original work order is inside it.”
The room went silent.
Dragan had seen the document at the station but had not understood its significance.
The original contained his signature.
But the locked emergency exits had been added later in different handwriting.
Someone had forged the modification.
Someone had used Dragan’s authorization to make the factory deadly.
Theodore looked at Clarissa.
“Who?”
Clarissa’s eyes filled unexpectedly.
“My father spent ten years trying to learn that.”
For the first time, she did not look glamorous or powerful.
She looked frightened.
“He found out six months before he died.”
“Who was it?”
Clarissa opened her mouth.
A voice came from the doorway.
“I believe that question belongs to me.”
Everyone turned.
Oswald stood there.
The elderly butler had traveled from the estate alone.
He held an old leather folder.
Theodore frowned.
“Oswald?”
Oswald looked at Nadia.
Then at Mila.
“I have served the Hawthorne family for forty years.”
His voice trembled.
“And for ten of those years, I have carried a truth I should have confessed long ago.”
He opened the folder.
Inside was the original factory security report.
At the bottom was an instruction written by Augustus Hawthorne’s private estate manager.
Theodore recognized the handwriting.
But Nadia recognized the name.
Because she had seen it every morning for seven years on the staff records.
Oswald Bennett.
Mila whispered, “You?”
May you like
Oswald lowered his eyes.
“I was the man who ordered the doors locked.”
