Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO KNEW HER SECRET
The forged trust document changed everything.
Daniel immediately notified the relevant financial institutions that the document was disputed and requested that no changes be made while the matter was reviewed.
We preserved the original files, the security footage, and the access records.
Then we focused on the man who had helped Victoria.
Peter Sloan was found living in a rented apartment outside Chicago.
Through his attorney, he agreed to provide information in exchange for having his cooperation considered by the appropriate authorities.
His account revealed a scheme that had been developing for months.
Victoria had first approached him about confidential business documents.
She wanted to know which assets were held personally by me and which belonged to trusts.
At first, Peter assumed she was simply trying to understand our finances.
Then she began asking about my travel schedule, my medical insurance, and the procedures involved if I became unable to manage my affairs.
Peter said he had refused to help her create false records.
But he had provided information about internal company systems before realizing how far she intended to go.
He had also received money from Richard's company.
When Daniel asked about the hospital records, Peter became visibly uncomfortable.
“I didn't create those,” he said. “I only delivered an envelope.”
“To whom?”
“To Victoria.”
“What was inside?”
“I don't know. But she told me it was proof that Nathan could never challenge her if the truth came out.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“What truth?”
Peter shook his head.
“I was never told.”
His account was important, but it still left the central question unanswered.
What had happened at the hospital?
Two days later, the hospital's compliance officer contacted Daniel.
The review had confirmed that the original birth records had been altered after an administrative error.
The error concerned the identification paperwork for one of the twins.
It had been corrected, but the correction had not been fully documented.
The hospital was investigating whether anyone had intentionally concealed the discrepancy.
Daniel arranged for an independent medical specialist to review the records.
The specialist confirmed that the available medical evidence supported the twins' identities as recorded in the final, verified documents. There was no medical basis for the rumors Victoria had apparently been circulating.
But the records revealed something else.
During the week after the twins were born, Victoria had contacted the hospital repeatedly, requesting copies of the original forms.
She had also asked whether an outside party could access the records without my knowledge.
That was not proof of a larger crime, but it explained why she had been so determined to control the paperwork.
Then Peter provided a final piece of information.
Victoria had told him that she was afraid I would discover an earlier financial arrangement between her and Richard.
They had borrowed heavily against their family's failing investment business.
The company was close to collapse.
Richard had convinced Victoria that marrying me would solve their problems.
She had initially expected to live comfortably as my wife.
But after learning about the trust my father had created for the twins, she began looking for a way to influence its administration.
The money wasn't supposed to belong to her.
It was meant to protect Noah and Grace.
Now she wanted access to it.
I sat alone in my office long after Daniel left.
I thought about the woman I had married, the children sleeping upstairs, and Emily sitting in a hospital room beside her son.
Victoria had treated a desperate mother like a prisoner because that mother had refused to abandon her sick child.
She had been willing to frighten my babies, falsify documents, and manipulate our family's finances.
And yet, I still couldn't understand why she had seemed so determined to hide the original hospital report.
The next morning, I received an anonymous email.
It contained a single sentence.
If you want the whole truth about your wife, ask why she chose you.
Attached was a photograph taken outside a Chicago courthouse three years earlier.
Victoria was standing beside Richard.
Between them was a man I recognized from the hospital records.
Dr. Samuel Reed.
May you like
On the back of the photograph, someone had written a date.
It was six weeks before Victoria and I first met.
