Chapter 6 - Unraveling the Web
By midnight, Ethan had brought Lucy back to his penthouse overlooking the East River.
The apartment, once planned to be Victoria’s marital home, felt cold and hollow. Ethan immediately took down the framed engagement portraits from the mantelpiece and threw them into the trash chute. He drew a warm bath for Lucy, found an oversized cashmere sweater of his own for her to wear, and ordered hot chicken broth from an all-night diner.
Lucy sat on the plush sofa, her knees pulled to her chin, sipping the broth from a porcelain mug. She looked tiny against the sprawling leather furniture.
“Are they going to put me in a home?” she asked quietly, her eyes tracking the rain running down the panoramic glass.
Ethan knelt beside the couch. He reached out, gently tucking a dry strand of hair behind her ear. “Never. You are my daughter, Lucy. You are coming home with me permanently. Tomorrow morning, my lawyers will file the emergency paternity acknowledgment and petition for full legal guardianship.”
“What if the lady says I’m not yours?”
“We’ll take a DNA test first thing in the morning,” Ethan smiled softly. “Not because I need proof—I already know who you are. But because we are going to use the science to build an iron wall around you that no one can tear down.”
A soft knock came at the front door. Ethan opened it to reveal Julian Vance—not Victoria’s corporate lawyer, but Julian Brooks, Ethan’s oldest friend and lead legal counsel for Pierce Architecture. Julian walked in carrying two laptops and a legal pad, his coat dripping onto the foyer mat.
“I saw the news alerts,” Julian said grimly. “Marcus Hale already released a statement claiming you suffered a nervous breakdown at the altar and that an unidentified minor attempted to extort the family.”
“Let them dig their own graves,” Ethan said, leading Julian to the dining table. He laid out the tan envelope Lucy had brought to the chapel.
Julian put on reading glasses and began examining the checks, the cashier receipts, and the handwritten notes. Within ten minutes, his expression shifted from concern to sheer horror.
“Ethan... these aren't just personal payments,” Julian whispered, pointing to the transaction stamps. “Look at the routing numbers. Victoria was routing these cashier checks through Hale Urban Development’s non-profit shell corporation—the one funded by city grant subsidies.”
Ethan leaned in. “She was using public housing grant funds to pay off Olivia?”
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“It’s wire fraud,” Julian said, looking up with wide eyes. “On a federal level. If Victoria used municipal non-profit accounts to silence an extortion victim, Marcus Hale’s entire real estate empire is complicit in felony embezzlement. And that’s before we even touch the safe-deposit box.”
***
