Chapter 3 - The Inheritance of Blood
Z
The seaside cottage Chris had rented for the weekend was supposed to be a sanctuary, a picturesque retreat built of weathered cedar shingles and floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the restless Atlantic ocean. Instead, it felt like a gilded cage. Inside, the air was suffocatingly thick with unanswered questions and rising hysteria.
Grace was pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor of the living room, her hands frantically running through her brown hair, while Emily sat on the plush sofa, her face buried in her knees as slow, silent sobs shook her frame. Chris stood by the front door, repeatedly checking the deadbolt and peeking through the wooden blinds into the pitch-black night outside.
“This is insane!” Grace shouted suddenly, spinning around to face me, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with a frantic mixture of betrayal and terror. “We aren’t 'Vances'! We are Trent Miller’s daughters! You raised us! You changed our diapers, you taught us how to ride bikes, you stayed up with us when we had the flu! How can some random rich family just show up after eighteen years and claim we belong to them?”
“They aren't claiming custody, Grace,” Andrea said gently from the kitchen island, where she sat with the opened manila file spread out before her. “You are eighteen years old. Legally, you are adults. No court in the world can order you to live with someone else or strip Trent of his status as your legal father.”
“Then what do they want?” Emily asked, lifting her head. Her voice was cracked, raw from crying. “If they don't want to take us back, why sending people to watch us on the beach? Why unseal the files now?”
“Because of the Vance estate,” Andrea replied, tapping a finger against an official legal document containing a family tree. “Julian Vance, the patriarch of Vance Global Logistics, passed away seven months ago. He left behind a fortune estimated at nearly four billion dollars. According to his ironclad, eighty-year-old trust structure, his entire estate passes exclusively to his direct, legitimate blood descendants. Julian had only one child—a daughter named Eleanor Vance.”
I leaned heavily against the fireplace mantel, my mind churning through the horrifying puzzle pieces. “Eleanor Vance… the mother who vanished eighteen years ago.”
“Exactly,” Andrea said grimly. “Eleanor went missing in the autumn of 2008. Her younger brother, Richard Vance, has been acting as the sole trustee and interim CEO of the family empire for the last decade and a half. He assumed Eleanor was dead and that he would inherit the entire fortune the moment Julian passed. But the trust explicitely states that if Eleanor produced living offspring, those children inherit sixty percent of the voting shares and the controlling stake in the corporation upon reaching their eighteenth birthday.”
The silence that followed was suffocating. The reality of the situation hit us like a physical blow. Emily and Grace weren't just abandoned babies—they were the sole rightful heiresses to a multibillion-dollar corporate empire, and their very existence threatened to strip a powerful, ruthless man of everything he had spent his life controlling.
Before anyone could speak, a sharp, heavy knock echoed through the cottage.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The sound rattled the glass windowpanes. Grace gasped, taking an immediate step back toward me. Chris drew a dark matte-black pistol from beneath his jacket—a weapon I didn't even know he was carrying—and stepped in front of the entry hallway, his body tensed for violence.
“Who is it?” Chris demanded, his voice dropping into the icy, command tone of his old military days.
“Process server for the Superior Court of the State of New York,” a cold, unfeeling voice responded from the other side of the heavy oak door. “I have an urgent summons and emergency injunctive order for Trent Miller, Emily Miller, and Grace Miller.”
Chris glanced back at me, a silent warning in his eyes. I shook my head, silently telling him not to shoot, and stepped past him toward the door. I pulled it open, keeping the heavy brass security chain engaged.
Standing on the porch under the flickering yellow entryway light was a tall, lean man wearing a gray suit, holding three thick legal packets clad in blue paper backings. Behind him, parked in the driveway, sat two black tinted SUVs, their engines idling with a low, threatening rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.
“Trent Miller?” the server asked flatly.
“What is this?” I asked, my hand gripping the edge of the door until my knuckles turned white.
“You are formally served with an emergency petition filed in federal court by Richard Vance,” the man stated, pushing the documents through the narrow gap in the doorway. “It includes a preliminary injunction restricting the travel of Emily and Grace Miller outside the state jurisdiction, a mandatory subpoena for immediate court-ordered DNA verification at the Manhattan District Attorney's office tomorrow morning, and a formal civil complaint accusing you, Trent Miller, of historic child abduction and illegal adoption conspiracy.”
“What?!” I roared, slamming my palm against the doorframe. “I didn't kidnap anyone! I found those babies freezing to death in a public changing room! The police were there! Social services were there!”
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The process server’s face remained entirely devoid of emotion, like an executioner delivering a routine sentence. “The filing alleges that you conspired with off-duty officers and corrupt social workers to fabricate the abandonment report in order to keep the children for yourself following the tragic death of your late fiancée. Read the document, Mr. Miller. You have twelve hours to appear in Manhattan, or a federal warrant will be issued for your arrest.”
He turned around without another word, stepped down the porch stairs, and climbed into the front seat of the leading black SUV. The vehicles backed out of the gravel driveway, their red taillights disappearing into the thick coastal fog, leaving us alone in the terrifying quiet of the dark night.
