Chapter 6 - THE DEAD WOMAN
Celeste Ward was alive.
Facial recognition software confirmed it.
Her official death certificate claimed she had died in a boating accident in Portugal.
No body had ever been recovered.
Rebecca confronted Grant.
For the first time, his arrogance disappeared.
“You found Celeste?”
“She tried entering the NICU.”
Grant went pale.
“No.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“I think if Celeste is alive, Jonathan is in more danger than you understand.”
Grant finally told the truth.
Eight years earlier, he had participated in the foundation fraud.
Not willingly, he claimed.
His father controlled the family empire.
Charles used Grant’s gambling debts to force him into approving transactions.
Celeste discovered it.
So did Rachel.
Grant admitted meeting Rachel shortly before her disappearance.
“I told her to stop asking questions.”
“You threatened her?”
“I warned her.”
Rebecca leaned across the table.
“Emma says you told Rachel she should have stayed gone.”
Grant closed his eyes.
“I was angry.”
“Why?”
“Because Jonathan found her.”
“That should have made you happy.”
Grant laughed bitterly.
“You don’t know my father.”
Grant claimed Charles had built an empire using fear.
Anyone who challenged him was financially destroyed.
Sometimes physically threatened.
Celeste had collected evidence.
Then she disappeared.
Grant believed Charles killed her.
Now she was apparently alive.
“Then whose side is she on?”
Grant looked at Rebecca.
“Her own.”
Meanwhile, Rachel remembered something else.
On the day she collapsed, someone delivered groceries.
She had not ordered them.
A box of infant formula sat inside.
Emma remembered the same thing.
“Mommy said it tasted funny.”
Rachel stared.
“What?”
“The bottle.”
Emma explained that Rachel had prepared one bottle to test the new formula.
Before giving it to the babies, she tasted it.
Twenty minutes later, she collapsed.
The sedative had been in the formula.
Someone had attempted to poison the children.
Rachel had accidentally taken it instead.
Rebecca immediately ordered testing of the empty container found in the kitchen.
The laboratory result returned positive.
Sedative.
High concentration.
The intended victims had been Noah and Lily.
And if Rachel had not tasted the formula first—
Both newborns might have died.
Emma overheard this.
She went silent.
Then asked one question.
“Why does somebody want my babies dead?”
Nobody answered.
Because the truth was worse.
DNA testing had just confirmed all three children were Jonathan Hayes’s biological children.
And under the Hayes family trust agreement, Jonathan’s descendants would inherit controlling shares if anything happened to him.
Without children, those shares passed to Grant.
May you like
Or, if Grant was disqualified—
To Charles.
