Chapter 16 - THE OTHER HEIRThe child in Richard’s photograph was a seven-year-old boy named Lucas Vale.
Records showed that Lucas lived with a foster family in Massachusetts.
Richard was listed as his father.
Celeste was listed as his mother.
They had abandoned him four years earlier.
Ethan struggled to understand why they would leave their own child while trying to steal Sophie.
Detective Bennett uncovered the answer in Richard’s messages.
The Whitmore-Mercer trust allowed only a direct descendant of Anna’s family to inherit.
Celeste originally planned to present Lucas as Anna’s secret son.
A DNA test would immediately expose the lie.
When Anna died and Sophie became the sole beneficiary, they changed their plan.
Celeste married Ethan and attempted to position herself as Sophie’s guardian.
Lucas became inconvenient.
They placed him with another family under false documents.
Sophie listened from the doorway as Ethan and Bennett discussed the case.
“Does that boy have a daddy?” she asked.
“He has a foster family taking care of him.”
“Did Celeste put him in a suitcase too?”
Ethan knelt beside her.
“I don’t know.”
“Can we make sure he is safe?”
“Yes.”
Ethan contacted the child-welfare agency overseeing Lucas’s placement.
The boy was physically safe and doing well in school.
He believed his parents died in a boating accident.
Professionals would decide when and how to tell him the truth.
Ethan established a protected educational fund for Lucas.
He did not use Sophie’s trust money.
He used his own.
Sophie drew Lucas a picture of the lighthouse.
At the bottom, she wrote that children should not be blamed for the choices adults make.
The investigation expanded again.
Richard and Celeste had used Lucas’s identity to open accounts and purchase property.
Blackstone Harbor was legally registered to the child.
They intended for investigators to blame the financial crimes on a trust created in Lucas’s name.
Even their abandoned son had been used as a shield.
The prosecution seized Richard and Celeste’s accounts.
The missing forty-eight million dollars was recovered before it left Europe.
Marcus Stern agreed to cooperate.
He admitted accepting bribes and preparing false guardianship papers.
He also revealed that Richard planned one final transfer.
A payment of twenty million dollars had been scheduled for the person who helped destroy Anna’s car.
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The listed recipient was not Noah.
It was someone Ethan believed had died years earlier.
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