Chapter 5 - Victor’s Perfect Heir
Margaret Sloan had served the Blackwood family for twenty-five years.
She drafted Ethan’s marriage agreement.
She prepared Lily’s trust before the birth.
She stood beside Ethan at Amelia’s funeral and assured him every legal detail had been handled properly.
Now she was helping Dr. Collins enter the hidden server room.
Federal agents surrounded Blackwood Tower.
But Collins had activated the building’s internal lockdown system.
Steel doors sealed the sublevel.
Sprinklers released chemical fire suppressant into the corridors, forcing agents to wear breathing equipment.
Ethan watched from the security command center.
“Why would Margaret help him?”
Mara examined financial records.
“Because she wasn’t only Victor’s attorney.”
A sealed birth certificate had been recovered from the Wisconsin clinic.
Margaret Sloan had given birth to a son thirty-eight years earlier.
Father:
Victor Blackwood.
The child’s name:
Daniel Sloan.
Daniel had supposedly died in infancy.
In reality, Victor and Margaret raised him under another identity.
Dr. Malcolm Collins.
Victor’s secret son.
The network was not merely a source of money.
It protected Victor’s hidden heir.
Under the Blackwood trust, Victor himself could inherit only if Ethan died childless.
But Victor’s unrecognized son had no claim.
They needed to remove Ethan, Amelia, and Lily.
Then Victor planned to take control and privately transfer it to Collins.
Ethan finally understood Victor’s obsession.
“You were never trying to inherit the company for yourself,” Ethan whispered while watching the locked server level. “You were clearing a path for your son.”
Inside the sublevel, Collins connected the metal case to the server.
Margaret entered access codes.
James monitored from another terminal.
“They’re downloading everything.”
“Can you stop it?”
“If I cut power, the emergency generators maintain the server.”
“Then corrupt the files.”
“We need them for evidence.”
Mara made the decision.
“Preserve an encrypted copy and destroy their access.”
James initiated a hidden backup.
The process required six minutes.
Collins began uploading another program.
A deletion command.
If it completed first, the records would vanish.
Five minutes remained.
Federal agents attempted to breach the steel doors.
Collins activated a second defense.
Explosive charges had been placed around the archive room.
The building began evacuating.
Ethan refused to leave.
“Those records identify missing children.”
“So does the backup,” Mara said.
“Not if it fails.”
Amelia called from the hospital.
Ethan answered while alarms echoed around him.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Blackwood Tower.”
“Victor’s archive?”
“How do you know?”
“He brought me there once.”
Ethan went still.
“When?”
“After the fire. Before Wisconsin.”
Amelia remembered a maintenance passage not included in current building plans.
Victor had shown it to her while trying to force her to reveal where she hid documents.
The passage connected an old subway utility tunnel to the archive’s ventilation room.
Ethan relayed the information.
A tactical team entered through the tunnel.
Two minutes remained.
The backup reached seventy percent.
Collins’s deletion program reached eighty.
Margaret noticed the hidden transfer.
“They’re copying it,” she said.
Collins pulled a gun.
He aimed at the server.
“If I destroy the drives physically—”
“You destroy the evidence protecting us,” Margaret replied.
“There is no us if I go to prison.”
Her expression changed.
For the first time, she saw Victor’s son clearly.
He had inherited his father’s belief that everyone else was expendable.
“You said we would leave together.”
“We were never leaving together.”
Collins fired.
Margaret dropped behind a console.
The bullet struck the server housing.
The backup stopped at ninety-four percent.
Agents entered through the ventilation room.
Collins fired toward them and ran.
Margaret remained on the floor with her hands raised.
A second shot struck an overhead pipe.
Steam filled the chamber.
Collins reached the utility tunnel.
Ethan watched his movement through thermal cameras.
“He’s heading toward the river exit.”
Mara ordered teams to intercept him.
At the river, Collins emerged carrying the metal case.
A boat waited.
The driver was Nora.
Ethan stared at the feed.
Nora had escaped federal protection.
She had promised cooperation, then returned to the network.
Collins jumped aboard.
The boat accelerated into the darkness.
Mara swore under her breath.
The backup had preserved most of the database, but six percent remained missing.
The missing section was labeled:
SUCCESSION CHILDREN
The records involving stolen heirs.
Collins still held them.
Margaret was arrested.
During questioning, she confirmed Collins was Victor’s son.
She also revealed the final part of Victor’s plan.
Lily was not meant to die.
Victor intended to have her declared legally incompetent when she became an adult.
Then Collins, presented as her court-appointed guardian and eventual husband to a fabricated identity, would control her inherited shares.
Ethan felt physically ill.
Victor had designed Lily’s entire life before she could speak.
Nora was supposed to raise her frightened, isolated, and dependent.
Bringing Lily into Blackwood Manor allowed Victor to test whether Ethan sensed the connection.
If Ethan failed to recognize her, the next stage would begin.
But Lily had recognized Ethan.
Not through documents.
Through Amelia’s words.
“Only a good man wears this code,” she had told the child.
The code was not an engraving or number.
It was a phrase Amelia taught Lily:
A Blackwood protects the child, not the name.
Ethan’s father had said it to him once.
Victor believed protecting the name justified sacrificing children.
May you like
Ethan would prove the opposite.
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