What Lily Heard in the Study
Chapter 06 - What Lily Heard in the Study
Three nights before the funeral, Lily had received a call from Richard asking her to come to the estate without telling anyone. When she entered the study, she found him pale, sweating, and surrounded by financial records.
Richard showed her transfers disguised as payments to medical suppliers. The companies did not exist. Over five years, nearly twelve million dollars had been diverted from the foundation. The electronic approvals carried Lily’s credentials, but the login records showed they had been used while she was overseas.
“He said Vivian had copied my security token,” Lily told Claire. “Grant created the shell companies. But there was another name hidden in the approval chain.”
Before Richard could show her, Vivian entered with a tray of tea. Richard told Lily to leave through the garden door and take the records. Lily made it only as far as the guesthouse.
Grant was waiting.
She remembered a cloth pressed over her mouth, the smell of chemicals, and Vivian’s voice saying, “The son will believe the numbers. He always chooses logic over family.”
Daniel looked away.
Lily reached for his hand. “I do not blame you.”
“I do.”
She continued. When Lily woke, she was in a dark storage room beneath the funeral home. She heard Grant arguing with the director about a customized coffin. Their plan was to hide her beneath Richard’s body, complete the burial quickly, and later claim she had fled the country.
“Why keep you alive?” Claire asked.
“They needed my face and voice to unlock an encrypted account. Dad moved the missing money before he died. He made it accessible only through both of us.”
Lily said she had refused to cooperate. Grant sedated her again. Before losing consciousness, she managed to schedule one final text using a phone he had left on a table. Richard had taught both children how to schedule emergency messages after a kidnapping threat years earlier.
Claire turned to Daniel. “What was behind your mother’s portrait?”
Daniel gave her the note and flash drive. The brass key had already opened the coffin. Claire sealed the remaining items in an evidence bag.
At dawn, a hospital administrator entered with troubling news. Vivian had filed an emergency petition claiming Lily was unstable, dangerous, and incapable of making decisions. She wanted immediate guardianship.
Claire’s jaw tightened.
May you like
“She is not trying to protect Lily,” Daniel said.
“No,” Claire replied. “She is trying to silence her before the will is read this afternoon.”
