The Document
Chapter 03 - The Document
Sophie waited until they were alone in the mansion's smaller upstairs study, door locked, the folder finally opened on the desk between them, before explaining anything further.
"I found this in your father's old safety deposit box three weeks ago," she said. "The bank contacted me because I was listed as a secondary authorized signer, something he must have arranged years ago without ever mentioning it to either of us."
Ethan stared at the document, his father's unmistakable signature at the bottom, dated eighteen months before his death, considerably later than the will that had been filed and executed after his passing.
"This is dated after the one the attorney filed," Ethan said slowly.
"It's dated after," Sophie confirmed, "which means it supersedes the one everyone's been operating under for the past six months. Your father changed his will eighteen months before he died, and somehow the version that got filed with the court was an older draft instead."
"How does that happen," Ethan asked. "How does an outdated will get filed instead of the current one."
"Either through a genuine clerical error," Sophie said, "or because someone made sure the newer version never reached the attorney's office in the first place."
Ethan read through the document carefully, the language dense but unmistakable once he found the relevant section. The current filed will split the estate roughly evenly between Ethan and his half-sister Vanessa, with their stepmother Diane receiving a modest lifetime allowance.
This will, the one Sophie had found, told a very different story. It left the mansion and the controlling shares of Calloway Holdings entirely to Ethan, citing specific, detailed concerns about Vanessa's handling of company funds over the prior two years, concerns Ethan had never heard his father voice directly.
"He knew," Ethan said slowly. "He knew something was wrong with how Vanessa was managing things, and he changed the will specifically because of it."
"That's what it looks like," Sophie said. "Which raises an obvious question. If your father changed this will specifically because he'd caught Vanessa doing something with company money, and the wrong version somehow got filed instead, who benefits from that specific mistake happening."
Ethan sat back, the full shape of the danger finally landing in his chest alongside the fear he'd been carrying since the atrium.
"Vanessa," he said quietly. "You think Vanessa was on that balcony."
"I don't know for certain," Sophie said. "I only saw a shadow, a silhouette I couldn't fully make out. But I know she had the strongest motive in this entire house to make sure this document never reached anyone official. And I know I told her, this morning, that I'd found something important in your father's old bank box."
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Ethan felt something cold settle in his chest, the specific horror of realizing he might have been living alongside a woman capable of trying to kill his own wife.
"We need to be very careful," he said, "about who else in this house knows what you just told me."
