Chapter 23 - The Altered Will
Daniel rolled to his left just as the heavy iron links struck the wall where his skull had been a fraction of a second before, obliterating the plaster and sending dust cascading into the air.
He scrambled to his feet, tasting copper in his mouth, but he kept his ground between Julian and Mason's door.
"You're too late, Julian!" Daniel spat, circling his opponent in the claustrophobic corridor. "The police know everything. Vanessa broke. Caroline sang like a bird. The entire Vance estate is frozen by federal injunction. You’re fighting for a family that already burned!"
Julian let out a low, guttural chuckle that sent chills racing down Daniel's spine. The rain outside lashed against the hallway skylight, lightning flashing for a split second, illuminating Julian's face: scarred, hollow-cheeked, with Diane's predatory amber eyes.
"You really think my mother wanted that pathetic estate?" Julian asked, flicking the chain like a whip. "You think Vanessa gave a damn about your suburban house? You never read Emily’s true will, did you?"
Daniel froze for a microsecond. *Emily's will?*
"Emily didn't just die in a car crash, Danny," Julian whispered, taking a predatory half-step forward. "She was running from us. She found out what Diane was laundering through the Vance Foundation. And before she died, she hid the offshore bearer bonds—twenty million dollars—inside a digital blind trust tied directly to that boy’s biometric signature."
Daniel’s blood turned to ice.
All this time, Daniel believed Vanessa’s cruelty toward Mason was pure, petty sadism—a wicked stepmother trying to break an unyielding six-year-old child. But it was far worse. Vanessa and Diane weren’t trying to break Mason’s spirit; they were trying to declare him psychologically incompetent.
If Mason had been institutionalized under Vanessa's legal guardianship, Diane would have gained unilateral authority over his trust accounts. The collar, the isolation, the staged photographs—it had all been designed to build a fabricated medical file of a feral, uncontrollable child incapable of holding inheritance.
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"And now," Julian sneered, leveling a heavy combat knife from his tactical belt, "the feds are closing in on our accounts. Diane gave me one final order before they locked her down: Extract the boy, get his thumb on the biometric drive, and bury you in the cellar."
***
