Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN SABINA USED TO BE
-3
“Don’t let her leave.”
Chadworth’s command echoed off the brick walls.
Marcus did not move.
Sabina did.
She darted through the doorway.
Chadworth lunged after her, but Rosamund grabbed his sleeve.
“Let her go.”
He spun around.
“She’s escaping.”
“No. She wants you to follow her.”
“What?”
Rosamund pointed toward Marcus.
The security chief remained in the doorway.
Too calm.
Far too calm.
Chadworth looked from one to the other.
“Marcus?”
Marcus exhaled.
“You should listen to her.”
The words were so unexpected that even Rosamund looked confused.
Then Marcus reached behind his jacket.
Chadworth stepped protectively in front of Rosamund.
Marcus removed a handgun.
Rosamund inhaled sharply.
But Marcus did not point it at them.
He placed it carefully on the floor.
Then he kicked it toward Chadworth.
“I’m not the person you think I am.”
Chadworth stared at the weapon.
“At the moment, I don’t know who anyone is.”
“That makes two of us.”
Rosamund shook her head.
“You worked with Sabrina.”
“I investigated her.”
“You followed Mrs. Prescott.”
“Because she asked me to.”
Rosamund froze.
Marcus looked at Chadworth.
“Your wife suspected someone was accessing the girls’ trust almost five years ago. She came to me privately because she believed someone in your corporate office was involved.”
“Why privately?”
“Because she didn’t know who you would tell.”
The implication struck like an insult.
“You’re saying Evelyn didn’t trust me?”
“I’m saying she trusted you completely.”
Marcus’s expression hardened.
“And she believed that made you vulnerable.”
Chadworth looked toward the doorway where Sabina had disappeared.
“Explain.”
Marcus stepped inside.
“Evelyn discovered a shell company receiving consulting payments from three charities tied to the Prescott Foundation. Every payment was small enough to avoid automatic review. But together, over several years, they amounted to almost eight million dollars.”
Chadworth felt nauseated.
“Why didn’t the auditors catch it?”
“They did.”
“What?”
“One auditor did.”
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared.”
Rosamund whispered, “Daniel Harker.”
Marcus nodded.
Chadworth knew the name.
Harker had resigned abruptly five years earlier.
At least that was what Chadworth had been told.
“Where is he?”
“No one knows.”
Chadworth’s gaze moved to the clipping.
“And Sabina?”
“Sabrina Devereaux was connected to one of the shell companies.”
“How?”
“She was an administrative assistant for a financial consulting firm that managed foundation distributions.”
Sabina had told Chadworth she came from an old Montreal family.
That she had studied art history.
That she had spent several years managing private events in Europe.
Every detail suddenly felt poisonous.
“She changed her identity?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marcus looked at Rosamund.
“That’s the part I never proved.”
Rosamund knelt beside the trunk.
“Mrs. Prescott did.”
She lifted a folder from beneath the photographs.
Inside were photocopies of passports.
Bank transfers.
Employee lists.
And a birth certificate.
Chadworth took it.
Sabrina Elise Devereaux.
Mother: Marianne Devereaux.
Father: blank.
“What am I looking at?”
Rosamund handed him another document.
An old legal settlement.
Prescott Holdings.
Twenty-nine years earlier.
Chadworth read quickly.
Then stopped.
The company had paid Marianne Devereaux $400,000 under a confidential settlement.
The authorization signature belonged to Chadworth’s father.
Arthur Prescott.
“What was this for?”
Rosamund shook her head.
“Mrs. Prescott never discovered the original complaint.”
Marcus spoke quietly.
“I did.”
Chadworth looked at him.
“Marianne Devereaux worked for your father.”
“As what?”
“A secretary.”
Something inside Chadworth twisted.
Marcus continued.
“She claimed Arthur Prescott had fathered her child.”
Chadworth looked down at the birth certificate.
Then at the photograph.
Then toward the doorway where Sabina had disappeared.
“No.”
Rosamund’s face showed pity.
“Chadworth—”
“Don’t.”
He had spent fifty-one years believing himself to be Arthur Prescott’s only surviving child.
His father had been cold, ruthless, brilliant.
But never once had he mentioned another daughter.
Marcus said, “The settlement included a nondisclosure agreement and an agreement that Marianne would never contact the Prescott family.”
Chadworth lowered himself onto the edge of a cabinet.
“Was the claim true?”
“We don’t know.”
Rosamund looked at the trunk.
“Mrs. Prescott believed it was.”
That changed everything.
Sabina was not simply a con artist who had targeted a billionaire.
She might be his half-sister.
The thought was so grotesque that Chadworth nearly laughed.
But another detail made the situation worse.
“She planned to marry me.”
Marcus nodded slowly.
“If the paternity claim is true, I don’t think marriage was ever the real goal.”
“Then what was?”
Rosamund opened another envelope.
Inside was a copy of Chadworth’s will.
He recognized it immediately.
But it was not the current version.
It was an unsigned draft prepared three years earlier.
A draft only his attorney, personal assistant and fiancée should have seen.
Sections were highlighted.
Upon the incapacity or death of Chadworth Prescott prior to marriage, all controlling shares would transfer temporarily to the trustees overseeing his daughters’ inheritance.
If he married, certain spousal rights would complicate the structure.
Yet the girls remained primary beneficiaries.
Chadworth read the highlighted notes in the margins.
Handwritten.
Remove minors through incapacity proceeding.
Secure medical guardianship.
Accelerate controlling transfer.
He stopped.
“What does ‘remove minors’ mean?”
Rosamund’s eyes filled with something close to dread.
“She planned to have Lorelai and Gemma declared psychologically unfit.”
Chadworth looked at her.
“They’re children.”
“Exactly.”
Marcus stepped closer.
“If Sabina could establish a documented history of behavioral instability, self-harm risk, violent outbursts, or severe emotional disturbance, she could argue they required institutional care and controlled guardianship.”
“She has no authority.”
“Not yet.”
Rosamund whispered, “She would after she became your wife.”
The cruelty toward the girls suddenly took on another meaning.
It was not random.
It was training.
Conditioning.
Creating fear.
Creating breakdowns.
Creating evidence.
Chadworth remembered Lorelai’s sudden school absences.
Gemma’s nightmares.
Sabina offering to arrange a private child psychologist.
Sabina telling him the girls were “struggling more than they admitted.”
He had believed she was concerned.
“What has she done to them?”
Rosamund looked away.
“Tell me.”
“She recorded them.”
“When?”
“When they cried.”
Chadworth felt his hands curl into fists.
“She would provoke them, then turn on her phone. Sometimes she locked away things Gemma loved until Gemma screamed. Sometimes she told Lorelai you might send her away because she was becoming difficult.”
Chadworth’s face went numb.
“She told my daughter I would abandon her?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew?”
“I knew some of it.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Your office.”
He remembered.
Eight months earlier.
Rosamund had asked for a private conversation.
Sabina had appeared in the doorway.
Rosamund immediately changed the subject and asked about Gemma’s dietary restrictions.
Chadworth had thought nothing of it.
Rosamund continued.
“The next day Marcus told me that if I made accusations without evidence, Sabina could have me removed from the property.”
Chadworth looked at Marcus.
Marcus shook his head.
“I told her that because it was true. At that point we had nothing admissible.”
“You had cameras.”
“Not inside private family spaces.”
“Apparently someone had plenty of cameras.”
Marcus’s expression darkened.
“The system you were watching today is the legal security system.”
“What does that mean?”
Rosamund answered.
“There’s another one.”
Silence.
Chadworth stared at her.
“Another what?”
“Camera network.”
“Where?”
“Bedrooms.”
His stomach turned.
“The girls?”
Rosamund nodded.
Chadworth stood.
“Show me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I never found the recording station.”
Marcus looked disturbed.
“This is the first I’ve heard about a second system.”
Rosamund gave him a skeptical look.
“I found a lens behind the smoke detector in Lorelai’s room three months ago.”
“Why didn’t you remove it?”
“Because I wanted to know who came to collect the footage.”
Chadworth closed his eyes.
Every instinct screamed at him to find Sabina.
But now he understood something terrifying.
Running after her would not expose the entire structure.
It would only frighten it into hiding.
He looked at Marcus.
“Lock the property.”
Marcus reached for his radio.
“Quietly.”
Marcus nodded.
“No cars in or out. No alarms.”
Rosamund suddenly looked toward the ceiling.
A faint sound traveled through the pipes.
A door closing.
Then footsteps.
“Sabina,” Chadworth said.
Rosamund shook her head.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she would run.”
The footsteps stopped directly above them.
A moment later, a male voice came through the old ventilation shaft.
“Chadworth?”
He recognized it immediately.
His younger daughter’s godfather.
His oldest friend.
And the chief financial officer of Prescott Holdings.
Edmund Carlisle.
Chadworth looked at Marcus.
“Why is Edmund in my house?”
Marcus’s face had gone pale.
No one answered.
Then Edmund’s voice came again.
“Chadworth, I know you’re down there.”
May you like
A pause.
“And before you come upstairs, there’s something you need to understand about Evelyn’s death.”
