Chapter 5 - The Heir They Wanted Dead
Evelyn survived the shooting.
The bullet passed through her shoulder without striking an artery.
For the first time in Declan’s adult life, Hayes Manor was abandoned.
Sarah, Rebecca and Lucy were moved to a hidden property in Vermont owned through six separate corporations.
Declan refused to tell even senior syndicate leaders the location.
Sarah disliked the isolation.
But after Rebecca had been run down and Evelyn shot through her own library window, she stopped arguing about security.
For two days, Declan vanished into the investigation.
On the third morning, Sarah found him sitting alone in the kitchen of the Vermont house.
He looked exhausted.
A cup of untouched coffee sat beside him.
“You don’t trust coffee anymore?” she asked.
Declan looked at the cup.
“Apparently not.”
She sat across from him.
“What did you find?”
He hesitated.
“Tell me.”
“Martin Rourke has been moving money out of Hayes accounts for fourteen years.”
“How much?”
“Approximately ninety-two million.”
Sarah stared.
“How did nobody notice?”
“He didn’t steal from the operating businesses. He skimmed from offshore reserves.”
“Money you weren’t supposed to admit existed.”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms.
“So my father discovered his corruption in 1999.”
“And Martin killed him.”
“Then what?”
“Patrick covered it up.”
Sarah’s face changed.
Declan did not soften the truth.
“My father didn’t order the murder. But afterward, he protected the organization instead of exposing Martin.”
“So he helped the killer escape.”
“Yes.”
Sarah looked out the window.
Snow had begun falling over the mountains.
“My mother took money from your family.”
“To protect you.”
“Maybe.”
Declan understood why she could not accept easy explanations.
“What else?” she asked.
Declan pushed a folder across the table.
Sarah opened it.
Inside were medical invoices.
Obstetric appointments.
Pharmacy receipts.
Her name appeared on none of them.
Instead, the patient was listed as Caroline Ward.
Sarah frowned.
“Who is that?”
“My mother.”
Sarah looked up.
Declan’s mother, Caroline Hayes, had supposedly died alongside Patrick in a private-plane crash when Declan was seven.
“What does she have to do with this?”
“These invoices are dated after the crash.”
Sarah froze.
“How long after?”
“Eight months.”
She stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
The room seemed to narrow.
Declan had grown up believing both parents died together.
Evelyn raised him afterward.
Now accounting records proved someone had paid for Caroline Hayes’s medical treatment under a false identity almost a year later.
“Was she alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Evelyn?”
“She says no.”
“You believe her?”
“I don’t know.”
Sarah leaned back.
The mystery surrounding her poisoning had become intertwined with decades of buried Hayes history.
Then she noticed one invoice.
A fertility clinic.
She read the line twice.
“Declan.”
He already knew.
“Why was your mother receiving fertility treatment after everyone thought she was dead?”
“She wasn’t.”
“What?”
“The patient date of birth is wrong.”
Sarah examined it.
Caroline Hayes would have been thirty-eight.
The patient was twenty-six.
“The alias belonged to someone else.”
Declan opened a second folder.
A photograph appeared.
A young woman leaving a clinic.
The image was grainy, but Sarah recognized the face.
“Evelyn?”
Declan nodded.
His aunt had been twenty-six in the photograph.
Sarah slowly understood.
“She used your mother’s name.”
“For fertility treatment.”
“But why hide it?”
Declan’s expression darkened.
“I had DNA testing done overnight.”
Sarah stared.
“On whom?”
“Vincent.”
Her breath caught.
“Vincent isn’t my cousin.”
Sarah felt the answer before he said it.
“He is my brother.”
The world tilted.
Evelyn Hayes had secretly given birth to Patrick Hayes’s child.
Declan’s father had fathered a son with his own brother’s wife?
No.
Declan clarified.
“My father and Evelyn were not biologically related. Evelyn married my father’s older brother, Thomas.”
Sarah exhaled.
Still terrible.
Still explosive.
“Vincent believes Thomas Hayes was his father.”
“He is wrong.”
“And Martin knows?”
“Yes.”
That explained succession.
If Declan died without an heir, Vincent stood to inherit enormous influence.
But if Vincent’s actual parentage became public, his claim could become stronger among some old families.
And weaker among others.
Sarah rubbed her stomach.
“The baby threatens more than money.”
“Yes.”
“It threatens a secret they’ve protected for decades.”
Declan’s phone rang.
Nolan.
He answered on speaker.
“We found Martin.”
“Where?”
“Not alive.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Martin Rourke’s body had been discovered in an abandoned warehouse.
He had been tortured.
His tongue removed.
On his chest, someone had carved one sentence.
THIEVES SHOULD NOT SPEAK.
Declan’s expression changed.
“This isn’t Martin cleaning evidence.”
“No.”
Sarah understood.
“Someone killed the man we thought was the killer.”
A second enemy existed.
Perhaps the real enemy.
Nolan continued.
“We also recovered Martin’s laptop.”
“Anything?”
“Encrypted. But there’s one file name we can read.”
“What?”
Nolan answered.
“HEIR PROTOCOL.”
Sarah instinctively covered her abdomen.
Declan’s voice dropped.
“Open it.”
“We’re trying.”
Sarah stared at him.
“What if the poison wasn’t intended to kill me?”
Declan looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
“The toxicology report specifically mentioned fetal defects.”
She swallowed.
“What if they wanted the baby dead and wanted me alive?”
The thought was somehow worse.
A dead secretary might start a war.
A miscarriage could be explained as tragedy.
Declan’s face hardened.
Before either spoke, Rebecca entered carrying her phone.
“You need to see this.”
She placed it on the table.
A breaking-news alert filled the screen.
HAYES GLOBAL CFO FOUND DEAD AS FEDERAL INVESTIGATION EXPANDS
Below it appeared another headline.
ANONYMOUS SOURCE ALLEGES DECLAN HAYES INVOLVED IN MULTIPLE PORT DISAPPEARANCES
Sarah looked at Declan.
“Someone is dismantling you.”
He stared at the screen.
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“They’re forcing me into the open.”
Another message arrived.
This time directly to Sarah.
A photograph.
Declan was standing outside the Vermont house ten minutes earlier.
Whoever took it knew their supposedly secret location.
The text beneath it said:
YOU CANNOT PROTECT HER.
May you like
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Then a second message appeared.
ASK DECLAN WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAST WOMAN WHO CARRIED A HAYES CHILD.
