Chapter 4 - THE ACCOUNT IN CLAIRE’S NAME
Claire had believed grief was the worst kind of confusion.
She had been wrong.
Grief at least came from knowing what you had lost.
This was different.
This was discovering that the person you had buried might have carried an entire second life into the ground.
Adrian dismissed everyone except Claire, Marco and Eleanor.
Vanessa protested.
Thomas argued.
Adrian ignored both.
“Guest room,” he told Marco. “Separate floors. Two guards each.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“You’re locking me inside your house?”
“I’m preventing people connected to thirty-year-old secrets from disappearing before sunrise.”
Thomas almost smiled.
“Good instincts.”
Adrian looked at him.
“You cut my employee’s shoe.”
Thomas’s smile vanished.
“I haven’t decided what to do with you.”
For once, Thomas had no clever reply.
Ten minutes later, Claire sat across from Adrian inside his private office.
A laptop rested between them.
Eleanor remained by the fireplace.
Claire’s hands were ice cold.
Adrian entered her information into a secure financial search system.
“You authorize this?”
Claire laughed once, shakily.
“Apparently someone already does things in my name. Go ahead.”
Adrian looked at her for a moment.
Then typed.
A result appeared.
One account.
First Federal Trust.
Opened twelve years earlier.
Current balance: $283,416.
Claire stared at the number.
“No.”
Adrian opened the transaction history.
The account had been funded in yearly installments.
$20,000.
$25,000.
$18,000.
Always cash equivalents.
Always deposited within a week of Claire’s birthday.
The final deposit had been made eleven months earlier.
Two months before her father died.
Claire covered her mouth.
“He never told me.”
Eleanor spoke quietly.
“Did your father have money?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“He repaired commercial elevators.”
Adrian looked up.
“Where?”
“Everywhere. Hotels, offices, hospitals.”
“Which hospitals?”
Claire frowned.
“I don’t know.”
Adrian turned the laptop toward Marco.
“Find his employment history.”
Marco began searching.
Claire rubbed her palms together.
“My father borrowed money before he died. I’m still paying some of his debts. Why would he hide almost three hundred thousand dollars?”
Adrian said, “Maybe it wasn’t his.”
She stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
“The deposits started when you were sixteen.”
Claire felt sick.
“Who gives a sixteen-year-old a secret account?”
“Someone planning for her future.”
“Or using her name.”
Adrian did not contradict her.
Marco spoke.
“Found something.”
They looked over.
“David Bennett worked for Keystone Elevator Service from 2001 until his death.”
“That’s right.”
Marco scrolled.
“Keystone had several institutional contracts.”
He stopped.
Adrian saw the name.
“St. Agnes.”
Claire’s stomach dropped.
The hospital where Adrian was born.
Eleanor lowered herself into a chair.
Adrian asked, “How long?”
“Keystone serviced St. Agnes from 2003 until the building closed in 2016.”
Claire tried to make sense of it.
“My father fixed elevators.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Maybe.”
“He did.”
“I’m not accusing him.”
“It sounds like you are.”
“I’m trying not to underestimate anything.”
Claire stood.
“I need air.”
Adrian closed the laptop.
“No one leaves the house.”
“I’m not one of your criminals.”
“No.”
His voice remained calm.
“You’re someone an unknown person has threatened twice tonight.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to control where I go.”
“No.”
A pause.
“It gives me a reason to keep you alive long enough to hate me tomorrow.”
Claire stared at him.
Despite everything, a small laugh escaped her.
She immediately felt guilty.
Adrian’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
Not quite a smile.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
“Yes?”
He listened.
“We’ll be there.”
“What?” Adrian asked.
“The camera technician is asking for Claire.”
Claire frowned.
“Why?”
“He says he’ll only explain the payment if she’s present.”
They went to the security office.
The technician sat beneath bright fluorescent lights.
His name was Peter Nolan.
Claire recognized him vaguely.
He had repaired systems at the estate before.
Peter looked exhausted.
When Claire entered, he stared.
“That’s not her.”
Marco frowned.
“What?”
“The woman who paid me.”
Claire stepped closer.
“You said she used my name.”
“She did.”
“But you saw her.”
“Yes.”
“What did she look like?”
Peter hesitated.
“Older.”
“How old?”
“Fifties, maybe.”
Claire’s mind raced.
“My mother?”
“Could be.”
Claire pulled out her phone.
She found a photograph of Elaine Bennett.
Peter looked.
“No.”
Relief came too fast.
Adrian noticed.
“Who, then?”
Peter rubbed his face.
“She wore sunglasses. Baseball cap. But she had a scar.”
“Where?”
“Right cheek.”
Eleanor gasped.
Everyone turned.
Adrian said, “You know her.”
Eleanor did not answer.
Adrian stepped toward his mother.
“Who has a scar on her right cheek?”
Eleanor’s hands began trembling.
“Rebecca.”
Thomas’s dead lover.
Vanessa’s mother.
The woman whose daughter might have been Claire’s mother.
Claire whispered, “Rebecca died fifteen years ago.”
Eleanor looked at Adrian.
“That’s what we were told.”
Peter suddenly shook his head.
“No.”
They turned.
“What?” Claire asked.
“The woman who paid me wasn’t that old.”
Adrian frowned.
“You said fifties.”
“Yes.”
“How old would Rebecca be?”
“Sixty-seven,” Eleanor said.
Peter shrugged.
“Maybe she looked young, but…”
Claire’s skin prickled.
Adrian asked, “When did she pay you?”
“Last Tuesday.”
Peter opened his phone.
“I took a picture.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to pay cash. I thought the whole thing was suspicious.”
He showed them.
The photograph was blurry.
A woman stood beside a dark sedan.
Baseball cap.
Large sunglasses.
Partial profile.
A narrow scar ran along her right cheek.
Claire felt nothing at first.
Then she zoomed in.
Around the woman’s neck was a tiny silver pendant.
A crescent moon.
Claire stopped breathing.
“My mother has that necklace.”
Adrian turned.
“You just said that isn’t your mother.”
“It isn’t.”
Claire zoomed further.
“But that necklace belonged to my grandmother.”
Margaret Hart.
The woman who had supposedly raised Rebecca’s missing baby.
Claire stared.
“My grandmother died six years ago.”
Eleanor whispered, “Are you sure?”
Claire almost snapped at her.
“I attended the funeral.”
“Did you see her body?”
The question made Claire furious.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Claire.”
Adrian’s voice was gentle.
She looked at him.
He had already realized something.
Claire thought back.
Closed casket.
Her mother had said the accident damaged Margaret’s face.
Claire had been twenty-two.
She had never questioned it.
“No.”
Her voice became weak.
“I didn’t.”
Eleanor stood.
“Margaret Hart had a scar on her right cheek.”
Claire looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“Because I gave her that scar.”
The words silenced the room.
Claire stared at her.
“What?”
Eleanor’s eyes filled with shame.
“Thirty-four years ago.”
“What happened?”
“She came to the hospital.”
“Why?”
“She was helping Samuel.”
“With the baby?”
Eleanor nodded.
Claire felt dizzy.
Adrian moved closer in case she fell.
Claire ignored him.
“My grandmother helped steal a baby?”
“She helped save one.”
“Whose?”
Eleanor looked at Thomas.
“Rebecca’s.”
Claire shook her head.
“No.”
“The plan was to hide the child temporarily.”
“Where?”
“With Samuel’s family.”
“My family.”
“Yes.”
Claire’s voice cracked.
“So my mother…”
“May have been Rebecca’s child.”
Claire swallowed.
“That would make Thomas…”
“Your grandfather,” Adrian said quietly.
Claire closed her eyes.
This was insane.
Impossible.
And yet the pieces kept joining.
Adrian asked Eleanor, “How did Margaret get the scar?”
“Michael discovered what we were doing. He came to the hospital. There was a fight. I pushed Margaret away from him, but she hit a glass cabinet.”
“And Michael?”
“He took one of the records and disappeared.”
Claire asked, “Why would my grandmother still be involved thirty years later?”
Eleanor whispered, “Because she never believed Michael was dead.”
Marco interrupted.
“Boss.”
He had been reading Peter’s phone.
“There’s more.”
Adrian turned.
“Peter received instructions from an encrypted number.”
“Can we trace it?”
“Already trying.”
Peter looked nervous.
“The woman told me to disable the corridor camera for five minutes.”
“Why?” Claire asked.
“She said she needed to enter the estate unseen.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
Peter swallowed.
“Someone else did.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“Who?”
“I didn’t see his face. But the feed came back briefly before I shut it down.”
Peter pulled up a stored frame.
A man in a maintenance uniform walked through the service corridor.
His head was lowered.
Adrian enlarged the image.
Claire recognized something.
His left hand.
A missing index finger.
Her knees almost gave out.
“No.”
Adrian looked at her.
“What?”
Claire pointed.
“My father lost that finger in an elevator accident when I was ten.”
Nobody spoke.
Claire stepped toward the screen.
The image was grainy.
The man’s face was mostly hidden.
But the posture.
The shoulders.
The slight bend in his right leg.
She had watched that man walk into their kitchen every evening of her childhood.
“That’s my father.”
Adrian looked at her carefully.
“Claire.”
“My father is dead.”
Peter whispered, “That video is from three days ago.”
Claire turned away.
“No.”
Adrian put one hand on her shoulder.
She shook it off.
“I buried him.”
“Claire.”
“I paid for the coffin.”
“I know.”
“I picked his suit.”
Adrian said nothing.
Claire’s breathing grew shallow.
Eleanor approached her.
“Sometimes the dead are safer than the living.”
Claire looked at her.
“You don’t get to say that.”
“You’re right.”
“My father wouldn’t do this.”
“Maybe he’s trying to protect you.”
“By framing me?”
Adrian looked again at the image.
“Maybe he isn’t framing you.”
Claire wiped tears from her face angrily.
“What do you call an account in my name, a payment in my name and fake photographs?”
“A trail.”
“To what?”
“That’s what we need to find.”
Marco’s computer chimed.
Everyone turned.
He stared at the screen.
“What?”
Adrian asked.
“I traced the encrypted number.”
“Where?”
Marco frowned.
“It isn’t a cell phone.”
“What is it?”
“A secure satellite connection.”
“Registered to?”
Marco looked up.
“Moretti Maritime.”
Adrian’s family company.
“Which vessel?”
Marco typed.
Then froze.
Adrian stepped closer.
“Marco.”
“The registration number belongs to a boat.”
Eleanor’s face changed before Marco even said the name.
Adrian noticed.
“What boat?”
Marco looked at him.
“The Belladonna.”
Eleanor whispered, “No.”
Claire looked between them.
“What is the Belladonna?”
Adrian’s voice became colder than Claire had ever heard it.
“The boat my father supposedly died on.”
Marco continued.
“It’s transmitting.”
“From where?”
He pulled up coordinates.
“Delaware Bay.”
Adrian stared at the screen.
Thirty years after the Belladonna sank, the vessel’s original satellite identification was broadcasting again.
Then an incoming video request appeared.
Unknown connection.
Adrian accepted it.
The screen remained black.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then a light switched on.
A man sat in a small boat cabin.
Gray hair.
Weathered face.
Missing left index finger.
Claire stopped breathing.
“Dad?”
David Bennett stared through the screen.
His eyes filled.
“Claire.”
She grabbed the desk.
“You’re alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“You let me bury you!”
“I know.”
Adrian moved beside her.
David saw him.
His expression changed.
“Adrian Moretti.”
“David Bennett.”
David leaned toward the camera.
“You need to get Claire out of that house.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because everything happening tonight was planned.”
“By whom?”
David glanced behind him.
Fear appeared in his face.
“Claire, listen to me.”
“Dad, where are you?”
“Don’t trust the bank account.”
“What?”
“The money isn’t for you.”
“Then who?”
David’s eyes moved again.
Someone was approaching.
“Dad?”
“Your mother never knew.”
“Knew what?”
David looked straight at her.
“That you weren’t born Claire Bennett.”
Her world stopped.
“What?”
The cabin door behind him opened.
David turned.
A shadow crossed the wall.
The connection flickered.
“Dad!”
He shouted one final sentence.
“Find your original birth certificate before Michael does!”
The screen went black.
Claire stared at it.
Nobody spoke.
Then Adrian’s phone rang.
Marco answered his own at the same time.
Both men looked toward the mansion windows.
Adrian said, “What?”
A guard’s voice crackled through Marco’s speaker.
“Boss, we’ve got vehicles coming through the south gate.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
“Authorized?”
“No.”
“Stop them.”
A pause.
Then gunfire sounded faintly outside.
Claire froze.
Adrian moved instantly.
“Lock down the house.”
Marco ran.
Adrian took Claire by the arm.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere without windows.”
Eleanor grabbed Claire’s other hand.
“Wait.”
They turned.
Eleanor’s face was pale.
“There’s one more thing.”
Adrian stared at her.
“Make it fast.”
Eleanor looked at Claire.
“David told you to find your original birth certificate.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t need to.”
Claire frowned.
“Why?”
Eleanor’s eyes filled.
“Because I know what name is on it.”
A crash echoed from downstairs.
Men shouted.
Adrian reached beneath his jacket.
Claire barely heard Eleanor’s next words.
May you like
“Your birth name was Clara Rebecca Vescari.”
And outside the locked mansion, someone had just come to make sure Claire Bennett never learned why.
