Chapter 4 - A Maid Who Refused to Disappear
The police photographed the cottage before anyone touched another thing. I stayed with Rosa while Nico called Margaret Hale. The attorney was seventy, direct, and furious that someone had entered her old client's home. She agreed to come at sunrise with certified copies of the trust. “And Nicholas,” she said over speakerphone, “do not let the Ashfords near your father's medical records.”
I barely slept. At six, I found Nico in the kitchen making coffee he clearly didn't know how to make. The machine had overflowed. “You can run a shipping empire,” I said, reaching for a towel, “but the coffee maker defeated you.” His tired smile was unexpected. “My enemies never had buttons this complicated.” It was the first time I'd heard him joke. For a moment, the house felt less like a fortress.
Margaret arrived with a leather briefcase and a memory sharper than any of ours. She explained that June was the month Elena had transferred shares of Bellwether into a separate family trust. If Antonio were declared incompetent and Nico were made to appear absent or negligent, a court-appointed manager might be asked to oversee his interests. Victoria's proposed merger could then become a very expensive trap. “A forged signature is not a small mistake,” Margaret said. “It is a warning of what they are willing to do.”
She asked whether Antonio had been examined recently. His nurse, Leah Morgan, brought a medical chart and confirmed that he was lucid, oriented, and capable of making decisions. But she also showed us an email she'd received from a clinic claiming to have evaluated him remotely. It contained a report with her name on it. “I never wrote this,” Leah said. Margaret put it into a sealed evidence folder.
By noon, the gossip sites had photographs of Victoria crying outside her father's townhouse. Their headline accused Nico of humiliating a devoted fiancée because of a servant's lies. My face appeared in a blurred photograph taken through the estate gates. My father called, frightened. “Sophie, people are saying you broke up a wedding.” I told him the truth. “I gave Rosa dinner. That's all I did.” He was quiet before saying, “Then keep telling the truth.”
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Nico offered to move my father to a safer apartment. I refused. “He has his own life. Please don't decide for him.” Nico nodded immediately. “You're right.” That simple answer surprised me. Men like him were used to being obeyed. I was beginning to learn that he could listen when he chose to.
That evening, a black sedan followed me on my way to the pharmacy. I ducked into a busy grocery store and called Gabriel. The car disappeared before he arrived, but I had photographed its plate. Back at the estate, Nico examined the image. “It's registered to Ashford Security.” I expected him to order me to stay inside. Instead he asked, “What would help you feel safe?” I told him I wanted the truth in public before Victoria could turn everyone against Rosa. Nico looked toward the garden. “Then we'll make sure the truth has witnesses.”
