Chapter 14 - Serena Walks Out of the Hospital
The emergency lights flickered on.
Serena stood at the end of the corridor wearing hospital clothes beneath a black coat.
Her face was pale.
A fresh bandage showed near her collarbone.
Two men stood behind her.
Victor recognized neither.
Marco raised his weapon.
Serena lifted one hand.
“If I wanted you dead, I would not have walked into a hallway where Marco could shoot me.”
Victor stared.
“You escaped surgery.”
“I left.”
“How?”
“I walked.”
“You were under police guard.”
She gave a tired smile.
“You really need better police.”
Lily stepped back.
“Why are you here?”
Serena looked at her.
“To stop Damien.”
Victor’s expression remained cold.
“He’s in custody.”
“For now.”
“He arranged his own arrest.”
Marco frowned.
“Why?”
“Because there is something inside the federal evidence room he needs destroyed.”
Victor looked at her.
“What?”
“The original marriage filing.”
Victor almost laughed.
“That’s evidence against you.”
“No.”
Serena shook her head.
“It contains a fingerprint.”
“Whose?”
“My mother’s.”
Victor went still.
Evelyn had claimed not to be directly involved in the forged marriage.
A fingerprint would prove otherwise.
Serena continued.
“But Damien doesn’t care about Mother.”
“He cares about what is written beneath the certification seal.”
“What is written?”
“A code.”
Victor stared.
“Code for what?”
“An account.”
“Whose account?”
Serena looked at Lily.
“Yours.”
Lily frowned.
“I don’t have an account.”
“Yes, you do.”
Serena handed Victor a folded paper.
The number matched the fraudulent account where two hundred thousand dollars had just been deposited.
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
“How do you know?”
“Because Damien opened it two years ago.”
Lily stared.
“Two years?”
“Before I worked for Victor.”
Serena nodded.
Victor’s face became cold.
“Why plan Lily’s betrayal two years ago?”
Serena looked at him.
“Because Mother knew Isabella had chosen her.”
Lily froze.
“What?”
Victor stared.
“Isabella chose Lily?”
Serena nodded.
“The nanny agency recommendation wasn’t Thomas’s original idea.”
“It was Isabella’s.”
Lily shook her head.
“I never met her.”
“No.”
“But she knew about you.”
Serena leaned against the wall, weakening.
“She investigated St. Matthew’s after you accused Ames.”
“She believed you.”
“She wrote your name in Ethan’s future care plan before he was born.”
Victor felt as though the floor shifted beneath him.
“Isabella knew Lily?”
“She knew of her.”
Serena looked toward Lily.
“She called you ‘the nurse who refused to lie.’”
Lily’s eyes filled.
Victor remembered Isabella’s obsession with planning.
Her binders.
Her contingency letters.
Her lists for Ethan.
He had not read all of them after her death.
It had hurt too much.
Serena continued.
“Mother found the care plan after Isabella died.”
“She realized if anything happened inside your house, Lily might eventually be placed near Ethan.”
“So she prepared to frame her.”
Victor finished.
Serena nodded.
Lily whispered.
“For years.”
“Yes.”
Victor looked at Lily.
Everything that had seemed accidental had been engineered around a dead woman’s final act of trust.
Lily looked away.
She was crying now.
Quietly.
“I thought my career was over.”
Serena watched her.
“It was supposed to be.”
Victor’s eyes hardened.
“And you knew.”
“I learned later.”
“How much later?”
Serena did not answer.
Victor stepped closer.
“How much later?”
“After I moved into the mansion.”
Victor’s face turned cold.
“You could have warned her.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Serena looked at Ethan’s photograph on Victor’s phone.
“Because I wanted what Mother promised me.”
Victor said nothing.
Serena’s voice dropped.
“And because hating all of you was easier than admitting I had become her.”
Silence.
Victor looked at Marco.
“Federal evidence room.”
Marco called.
The answer came fast.
Damien was still in custody.
But a fire alarm had forced the evidence building to evacuate fifteen minutes earlier.
Victor stared at Serena.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“Who triggered it?”
“One of Damien’s people.”
“Is the certificate gone?”
Marco received confirmation.
“Yes.”
The evidence envelope had vanished.
Victor’s jaw tightened.
Serena slid down against the wall.
Lily rushed instinctively to help her.
Serena laughed weakly.
“You really are ridiculous.”
Lily checked the bandage.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I noticed.”
“You tore your stitches.”
“Also noticed.”
Lily looked at Victor.
“She needs a hospital.”
Serena shook her head.
“No.”
“You can hate me later.”
Lily pressed cloth against the wound.
“Right now, you need treatment.”
Serena stared at her.
“Why?”
Lily looked into her eyes.
“Because I’m not you.”
Serena stopped smiling.
For once, she had no reply.
They took her to a private clinic.
Under guard.
This time Victor chose the guards himself.
Catherine returned and gave Victor the ledger.
Marco’s fraudulent payment appeared exactly as described.
Lily’s too.
Then Victor found another name.
SERENA MONTIGUE.
Payment: five million dollars.
Serena looked at the page.
“I never received that.”
Victor checked.
The account existed.
Untouched.
Framed too.
Evelyn had prepared evidence against her own daughter.
If Serena ever turned.
Victor looked at her.
“Your mother intended you to take the fall.”
Serena stared.
No tears.
No visible shock.
Only a tiny movement of her jaw.
“I know.”
“When did you realize?”
“When she ordered Damien to kill Ethan.”
Victor’s voice hardened.
“And before that you were willing to help.”
“Yes.”
Lily looked away.
Serena did not excuse herself.
That almost made it worse.
Catherine continued through the ledger.
“There’s one account we haven’t identified.”
Initials only.
M.V.
Marco frowned.
“Not me.”
Victor looked at the amount.
Thirty million dollars.
The largest payment.
Recurring for eleven years.
Lily whispered.
“Who is M.V.?”
Serena’s face changed.
She knew.
Victor noticed.
“Who?”
Serena closed her eyes.
“You are not going to like this.”
“Name.”
Serena looked directly at him.
“Margaret Voss.”
Victor froze.
Isabella’s mother.
His dead wife’s mother.
Ethan’s grandmother.
Margaret Voss had been living quietly in Boston since Isabella died.
She visited Ethan every Christmas.
She had held him at his baptism.
She sent books every month.
Victor stared at Serena.
“No.”
Serena nodded.
“Mother never acted alone.”
Victor remembered Helena.
Isabella’s cousin.
The disputed inheritance.
The Voss family resentment.
But Margaret?
Isabella’s mother had defended Victor after the accident.
She had comforted him.
She had wept beside Isabella’s coffin.
Serena continued.
“Margaret believed Alexander stole the Voss fortune by manipulating Isabella’s grandfather.”
“She blamed Isabella for refusing to challenge the will.”
Lily stared.
“She helped kill her own daughter?”
Serena’s expression was unreadable.
“I don’t know.”
Victor stood.
He called Margaret.
She answered on the second ring.
“Victor?”
Her voice was warm.
Familiar.
He almost hated that most.
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Is Ethan all right?”
Victor stared at Serena.
“He’s alive.”
“Thank God.”
Victor’s voice became quiet.
“Do you know Evelyn Montigue?”
Silence.
Not long.
Maybe two seconds.
But enough.
Margaret answered.
“No.”
Victor closed his eyes.
Lie.
“Do you know why thirty million dollars has been transferred to an account under your initials?”
A longer silence.
Then Margaret exhaled.
“Victor.”
His face hardened.
“Did you help kill Isabella?”
Lily looked toward him.
Catherine covered her mouth.
Serena stared at the floor.
Margaret did not answer.
Victor repeated.
“Did you help kill your daughter?”
Margaret’s voice finally came.
“No.”
Victor felt no relief.
Because she continued.
“But I knew they were going to frighten her that night.”
Victor stopped breathing.
“You knew someone had tampered with her car.”
“I thought they were disabling it.”
“You knew.”
“I didn’t know Thomas changed the plan.”
“You knew.”
“I wanted Isabella to come home.”
Victor’s hand trembled.
Margaret began crying.
“She was giving everything to you.”
“She stopped speaking to us.”
“She acted as if the Blackwoods mattered more than her own blood.”
“So you helped terrorize her.”
“I wanted my daughter back.”
Victor’s voice turned cold.
“You put her in a grave.”
Margaret sobbed.
“I didn’t know.”
Victor looked toward Ethan.
“Where is Helena?”
Margaret went silent.
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
“Where is Helena?”
Then he heard a man’s voice in the background.
Damien.
Victor stared at the phone.
Impossible.
Damien was supposedly in federal custody.
Margaret whispered.
“Victor…”
The line disconnected.
Marco checked immediately.
Damien Montigue had escaped during transport seventeen minutes earlier.
Victor looked at Serena.
She sat upright despite the pain.
“Where would he go?”
Serena’s face went white.
“To Margaret.”
“Why?”
“Because Margaret has the last copy of Isabella’s real will.”
Victor froze.
“What real will?”
Serena looked at Ethan.
“The one that says the Voss inheritance never belonged to Ethan.”
And suddenly every murder, every forged trust, and every betrayal rested on a question nobody had asked.
May you like
What if the fortune at the center of the war had never legally belonged to the Blackwoods at all?
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