Chapter 4 - The Woman Everyone MisunderstoodConrad Valmont left the hospital under escort.
By midnight, Nicholas had hired an independent security firm, two forensic accountants and a criminal attorney.
Iris discovered that billionaires responded to attempted murder the way ordinary people responded to a leaking faucet.
They assembled professionals.
Fast.
Nicholas’s weakness did not alter the speed of his mind.
From the hospital bed, he issued orders with ruthless efficiency.
Freeze access credentials.
Audit family trusts.
Secure medical records.
Preserve security footage.
Remove Dr. Arthur Mercer from every Valmont-funded clinic.
Notify the board that Nicholas would chair an emergency meeting remotely.
At 2:00 a.m., Iris took away his laptop.
He stared at her as though she had committed treason.
“Give it back.”
“No.”
“I own the company.”
“Congratulations.”
“Iris.”
“You nearly died yesterday.”
“I am working.”
“You are attached to a cardiac monitor.”
“They are not mutually exclusive.”
“They should be.”
Nicholas reached for the laptop.
She moved it farther away.
His eyes narrowed.
“Do you enjoy abusing your temporary power?”
“Immensely.”
A knock interrupted them.
Evelyn Shaw entered.
She wore trousers and a cream blouse this time. No dramatic heels. No carefully arranged waves.
Iris felt stupid for every jealous thought she had entertained.
Evelyn looked at the confiscated laptop.
“I like her.”
Nicholas frowned.
“Everyone does.”
Iris looked at him.
The admission seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her.
Evelyn sat.
“I have news.”
Nicholas’s humor disappeared.
“Conrad?”
“His attorney contacted mine.”
“Already?”
“He denies knowing anything about the medication.”
“Of course.”
“He claims Mercer called him because you were incapacitated and the family needed to prepare.”
Nicholas’s mouth hardened.
“Mercer violated medical privacy to warn my uncle that I might die?”
“That is Conrad’s position.”
“He’s lying.”
“Probably.”
Evelyn opened her portfolio.
“But that isn’t the interesting part.”
She placed a document on the bed.
Iris stayed near the window.
Nicholas read.
His face changed.
“What is it?” Iris asked.
Nicholas handed her the page.
It was an old insurance authorization.
Patient: Elena Valmont.
Nicholas’s mother.
Physician: Arthur Mercer.
Iris looked up.
“Mercer treated your mother?”
Nicholas did not answer.
Evelyn did.
“For the final seven months of her life.”
The room chilled.
Nicholas took the document back.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“He would have been young.”
“Thirty-one.”
Nicholas’s fingers tightened around the paper.
“What was her diagnosis?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“Cardiac failure.”
Iris felt goosebumps rise along her arms.
Nicholas whispered, “No.”
Evelyn placed another page beside him.
“Your mother experienced tremors, weakness, shortness of breath and progressive arrhythmia.”
The same symptoms.
Nicholas looked physically ill.
“Did they perform toxicology?”
“According to the records, yes.”
“And?”
“The report is missing.”
Iris closed her eyes.
The photograph in the mansion.
SHE TRUSTED THE WRONG DOCTOR TOO.
Nicholas swung his legs off the bed.
“I’m leaving.”
“No,” Iris and Evelyn said simultaneously.
Nicholas stared at them.
Evelyn folded her arms.
“You have terrible taste in women, Nicholas, but apparently excellent taste in domestic staff.”
Iris coughed.
Nicholas looked almost embarrassed.
Evelyn continued.
“The house is a crime scene. You’re safer here.”
“Someone entered my home.”
“Exactly.”
“I want to know how.”
“The security team is investigating.”
Nicholas looked at Iris.
“You need to leave the mansion.”
“No.”
“That was not a suggestion.”
“Then it was poorly phrased.”
“Iris.”
“If someone is trying to kill you, why would sending me away make anything better?”
“Because the person who entered the house now knows you matter to me.”
Silence.
Evelyn’s gaze moved discreetly to the documents in her lap.
Iris’s heart hit painfully against her ribs.
Nicholas realized what he had said.
Neither corrected it.
Iris stepped closer.
“You think I’m in danger.”
“I know you are.”
“I’ve spent half my life being moved from one house to another because someone else decided where I belonged.”
Nicholas’s expression softened.
“You know about that?”
“You told me.”
“Apparently while discussing chickens.”
“Margaret was important.”
Against all logic, he smiled.
Iris continued.
“I’m not leaving because someone scares me.”
“This isn’t about bravery.”
“No. It’s about choice.”
That word.
The same one that had defined the night before.
Nicholas looked away first.
At noon, Dr. Hale returned with better news.
Nicholas’s liver and kidney function were improving since discontinuing the unknown medication.
His heart remained damaged but more stable than it had been in weeks.
“We need time,” Hale said. “Weeks, perhaps months, before we understand how much recovery is possible.”
Nicholas absorbed the information quietly.
“And the six-to-twelve-week estimate?”
“I would no longer use it.”
Iris’s eyes filled.
Nicholas noticed.
After the physician left, she turned toward the window so he would not see.
Too late.
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
“You’re terrible at lying.”
“I learned from you.”
He watched her.
“You were prepared for me to die.”
She looked at him.
“I wasn’t prepared for anything.”
“Iris.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For getting poisoned?”
“For not telling you.”
She stared.
“You didn’t owe me that information.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Nicholas’s answer took too long.
Finally he said, “Because if I had died without telling you, you would have thought I simply disappeared.”
Her chest tightened.
“You really think I would have come downstairs one morning and nobody would explain where you were?”
“I left instructions.”
“What instructions?”
He hesitated.
“Nicholas.”
“Evelyn was supposed to speak with you.”
“About?”
“The house.”
Iris blinked.
“What about the house?”
“I left it to you.”
She laughed.
Nicholas did not.
The laugh died.
“You did what?”
“The mansion. The lake property. Enough money to maintain either.”
Iris stared as if he had begun speaking another language.
“You cannot leave me a mansion.”
“I can. I own several.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“You’ve lived here longer than anywhere else.”
“How do you know that?”
Nicholas’s eyes immediately betrayed him.
Iris felt the floor shift.
“You investigated me?”
“When I hired you.”
“Five years ago?”
“And later.”
“Later when?”
He looked almost uncomfortable.
“Three years ago.”
The exact period when Iris had realized her feelings had changed.
“Why?”
Nicholas said nothing.
The answer lived in the silence.
Evelyn saved him by returning.
She carried a laptop.
“We found the security breach.”
Nicholas sat straighter.
“How?”
“Someone used an active household master credential at 1:53 a.m.”
Iris frowned.
“There are only three master codes.”
“Correct.”
Evelyn rotated the screen.
The access log showed a name.
MARGARET WHITMORE.
Nicholas’s personal secretary.
The woman who had been calling repeatedly about his board meetings.
Iris stared.
“Mrs. Whitmore?”
Nicholas looked deeply unsettled.
“She’s worked for me eleven years.”
“Since you were eighteen?”
“She worked for my father before that.”
Evelyn nodded.
“And before your father?”
Nicholas looked at her.
Evelyn zoomed in on another archived employment document.
Margaret Whitmore.
Executive assistant.
Private office of Elena Valmont.
Nicholas’s mother.
Iris’s stomach dropped.
“She worked for your mother.”
“For six years.”
Nicholas stood.
“She knew Mercer.”
“Almost certainly.”
Iris remembered Mrs. Whitmore’s repeated calls.
Three times yesterday.
Desperate.
What if they had misunderstood?
“Maybe she wasn’t the intruder.”
Nicholas turned.
“The code says otherwise.”
“No. It says someone used her code.”
“Why would someone have it?”
“Maybe because she gave it to them.”
“Same problem.”
Iris shook her head.
“Or because she wanted us to find something.”
Nicholas frowned.
“The photograph.”
Evelyn looked between them.
“What photograph?”
Iris explained the message.
Evelyn became still.
Nicholas reached for his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Whitmore.”
The call went directly to voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
Evelyn searched her messages.
“Her assistant says she hasn’t come to the office today.”
Nicholas froze.
Iris suddenly understood why Mrs. Whitmore had called three times.
Maybe she had not been chasing a board schedule.
Maybe she had been trying to warn him.
Evelyn’s phone rang.
She answered.
Listened.
Her face changed.
“What?”
Nicholas demanded.
Evelyn slowly lowered the phone.
“Margaret Whitmore’s car was found twenty minutes ago.”
Nicholas’s fingers tightened.
“Where?”
“Near Montrose Harbor.”
“Was she inside?”
“No.”
Iris’s heart sank.
Evelyn continued.
“Her purse was on the passenger seat.”
Nicholas looked toward the window.
“And her phone?”
“Missing.”
The woman who had worked for the Valmont family for nearly three decades had vanished less than twelve hours after Nicholas received a warning about his mother.
May you like
And suddenly the question was no longer simply who wanted Nicholas dead.
It was how many people had already disappeared protecting the truth.
Related Stories
