Chapter 6 - UNCLE VICTOR
Victor denied kidnapping Evelyn.
Immediately.
Too immediately.
Adrian remained seated.
Nora had been removed from the room.
Elena stayed with her.
Roman stood at the wall.
Rebecca sat with a recorder openly visible.
“Explain the photograph.”
Victor stared.
“Evelyn hated me.”
“Why?”
“She thought I represented everything wrong with your family.”
“Did you go to Vermont?”
“Yes.”
Adrian’s hand tightened around the table.
“Why?”
“Your father asked me to watch Evelyn before he died.”
Adrian stared.
“My father had been dead six years.”
“Instructions survived him.”
“What instructions?”
Victor looked older suddenly.
“Protect Kane blood from succession exploitation.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“Nora is a child.”
“Exactly.”
Victor claimed an old faction inside the organization believed Adrian’s first child would become leverage.
Kidnap the child.
Force Adrian into concessions.
Control legitimate assets through family trusts.
Evelyn discovered the threat before Adrian.
She refused to trust his men.
Reasonable.
Victor learned where she went.
He traveled to Vermont intending to relocate her safely.
“Then where is she?”
Victor looked down.
“I lost her.”
Adrian stood.
Roman moved subtly.
Victor raised his hands.
“Listen.”
He claimed the men arriving at the clinic were not his.
He realized too late Evelyn had been tracked.
He put her into his vehicle.
Tried to leave.
Another car forced them off the road.
Victor was beaten unconscious.
When he woke, Evelyn was gone.
“Why stage the crash?”
“I didn’t.”
“Why let me bury her?”
Victor’s eyes filled.
“Because I believed she was dead.”
“You never told me you saw her alive.”
“I was afraid you’d start a war.”
Adrian laughed bitterly.
Everybody protected him with silence.
Victor continued.
“The crash happened the same night. Evelyn’s belongings appeared inside. I assumed whoever took her killed her and staged the body.”
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
“Liar.”
“Adrian—”
“Three years.”
His voice cracked.
“You watched me stand at that grave.”
“Yes.”
“You knew the body wasn’t proven hers.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Nora existed.”
Victor’s silence answered.
Adrian nearly lost control.
Then Nora’s voice returned in memory.
Find her.
Not avenge her.
Find.
Adrian sat.
“Why didn’t you find Nora?”
“Margaret vanished before I recovered.”
“Yet Margaret lived for another year and a half.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
Victor did not ask to be trusted.
He offered his files.
Old security photos.
Bank records.
Names.
One file contained payments from a company called Lucent Medical Holdings.
The same holding company that owned the fake transport service used in Evelyn’s staged crash.
Director at the time:
Simon Vale.
Adrian knew him.
Former chief financial officer of Kane Holdings.
Fired five years earlier for embezzlement suspicion.
Supposedly living abroad.
Victor believed Simon built the faction targeting Nora.
But records showed Simon died eighteen months ago in Prague.
Again, death closed a door without answering who stood behind it.
Then Rebecca found another name in Lucent’s ownership history.
Minority beneficiary:
E.K.
Adrian stared.
Evelyn Kane.
His wife appeared to own part of the company that staged her own death.
Victor looked genuinely shocked.
Adrian felt the mystery change shape.
May you like
Either Evelyn had been framed—
or she had participated in disappearing far more deeply than anyone had admitted.
