Chapter 5 - THE MAN NATHAN FEARED
Mae had worked for the Hales for twenty-three years.
She remembered Nathan as a boy who left muddy footprints across the marble and complained when Marcus made him wear a tie to Sunday dinner. She also remembered him becoming quieter during the final months of his marriage.
Nathan had started spending more nights in the guest room.
Victoria told Marcus they were having ordinary disagreements about parenting and work.
Mae knew otherwise.
Two weeks before the accident, Nathan asked her whether Derek had ever entered the mansion while he was away. Mae said yes. Derek came twice, both times introduced by Victoria as a security consultant for the family’s upcoming property development.
Nathan became angry.
He instructed Mae not to leave Lily alone with Derek.
Then he asked her to copy the household visitor log.
Mae did.
She gave Nathan the copy the day before his death.
Marcus stared at her through the hospital video call.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nathan told me not to involve you until he understood what was happening.”
“What did he think was happening?”
Mae hesitated.
“He thought Victoria and Derek were moving money.”
Nathan had been investigating unauthorized payments from a family development fund into a consulting company Derek controlled. Marcus remembered his son mentioning accounting irregularities, but he assumed they concerned ordinary project overruns.
Nathan died before submitting his findings to the board.
After the funeral, Victoria told Marcus the irregularities were resolved.
Marcus accepted that too.
Hannah obtained Derek’s corporate records.
His consulting company, Walsh Strategic Services, received more than four million dollars from Hale Development during the eighteen months before Nathan died.
The contracts referred to risk management, security assessments, and restructuring support.
Several invoices contained no meaningful description of work performed.
The financial motive widened.
Derek might not have been only Victoria’s lover.
He might have been using the relationship to steal from Nathan’s business.
The inheritance directive then became a second financial route. If Lily died, Victoria stood to receive funds outside the restrictive child trust. Those funds could be used to settle Derek’s debts or conceal earlier diversions.
The first major reveal came when Hannah found the electronic-signature audit.
The disputed directive was not signed from Nathan’s office.
It was signed from a computer at Whitcomb Legal Services.
Nathan’s email account had been used to authorize it.
But the authentication code went to a phone number that did not belong to Nathan.
It belonged to Victoria.
Marcus looked at the report.
The directive might not have been Nathan’s decision at all.
It might have been the document Victoria and Derek prepared to profit from Lily’s death.
Then Hannah found one more detail.
The original estate plan, signed before Lily’s birth and updated afterward, contained a different fallback arrangement.
If Lily died before receiving her inheritance, the remaining funds would pass to a charitable foundation Nathan established in his late mother’s name.
Victoria was not the fallback beneficiary.
May you like
The disputed directive changed that.
Someone had moved ninety-four million dollars away from a foundation and toward a woman who later threatened the child whose survival kept the money out of her hands.
