Chapter 6 - The Badge Made Before I Arrived
At 11:07 p.m., the fire department cleared the executive floor.
At 11:12, Nathan confirmed the fire had started with hotel cleaning solvent and a timed heating device.
At 11:16, I signed the trust acceptance papers in a private conference room on the twenty-fourth floor.
Margaret watched every stroke of my pen.
When I finished, Elias checked his watch.
“Witnessed at 11:17 p.m.”
Sebastian exhaled.
Margaret did not.
Andrew looked tired.
I looked at the fake employee badge on the table.
“Now explain that.”
Nathan had already pulled access logs.
“The badge was created by a system administrator account.”
“Whose?”
He hesitated.
“Mine.”
Sebastian looked up.
Nathan remained calm, but his jaw tightened.
“I did not create it.”
Margaret laughed.
“Convenient.”
Nathan turned his laptop toward us.
“My account logged in from an office terminal while I was in New York for a conference. Travel records confirm it.”
“Which office?” I asked.
He zoomed in.
“Family administration.”
Margaret’s department.
She stared at him.
“You’re accusing me?”
“No.”
Nathan looked at the security footage.
“I’m saying someone inside your office used my credentials.”
Olivia stood near the window.
She looked miserable.
I remembered what she had said in the stairwell.
I’ve seen pictures.
“Olivia.”
She looked at me.
“Where did you see my picture?”
Margaret said, “Don’t answer that.”
Olivia’s face changed.
That was enough.
I stepped closer.
“Your mother hit me in front of a room full of people and called me a thief. I deserve one honest sentence from somebody in this family.”
Olivia looked at Margaret.
Then at Andrew.
“There’s a file.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“What file?” Sebastian asked.
Olivia swallowed.
“About Charlotte. About Clara. Mom kept it in the blue cabinet in the family office.”
Margaret snapped, “You had no right to go through my files.”
Olivia laughed shakily.
“You had no right to have surveillance photos of a woman and her kid for fifteen years.”
The room went silent.
My skin went cold.
“Fifteen years?”
Olivia nodded.
“I saw school pictures. Apartment addresses. Your old job at the library. Your mother’s hospital.”
Sebastian stared at Margaret.
“You told me you lost them.”
“I did.”
“That is not what this sounds like.”
Andrew spoke quietly.
“Dad, there were security concerns.”
“About a twelve-year-old?”
No answer.
Nathan sent two officers to retrieve the file.
They came back ten minutes later.
The blue cabinet was empty.
But the office shred bin was not.
A page had been missed.
Nathan flattened it on the table.
It was an old photograph of me leaving middle school.
On the back, someone had written:
DO NOT CONTACT. SEBASTIAN CANNOT KNOW WHERE THEY ARE.
Beneath that was a signature.
Not Margaret’s.
Andrew’s.
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