Chapter 2: The Sanitarium’s Ledger
Chapter 2: The Sanitarium’s Ledger
The interior of Richard Beaumont’s private study felt less like an office and more like a fortress. The walls were lined with reinforced steel doors disguised as oak paneling, and three separate computer monitors behind his desk showed the live feeds of the estate’s security gates.
Caleb had fallen asleep on the leather sofa, exhausted from crying, his small hand still loosely gripping my index finger. I sat beside him, refusing the glass of water Richard had offered me, my eyes tracking every movement the billionaire made as he paced the room.
The door clicked open, and an elderly man in a sharp grey suit entered, carrying a heavy leather briefcase. This was Arthur Pendelton, the Beaumont family’s chief legal counsel for the last thirty years. He looked completely drained, his face pale beneath the green-shaded reading lamps.
“Richard,” Pendelton said, his voice dropping into a hushed whisper as he glanced at Caleb and me. “I’ve reviewed the documentation from the 2025 filing. It’s exactly what we feared. The adoption wasn't handled through the state agency. It was processed through a private legal entity called Vanguard Placements—a shell company registered in Panama.”
“And the funding?” Richard demanded, leaning over his desk, his hands planted flat on the leather surface.
Pendelton pulled out a thick ledger of wire transfers, sliding it across the desk. “Two point five million dollars, drawn from Eleanor’s personal trust account in June of last year. The recipient was a man named Donald Vance—a former private investigator from Oregon who was disbarred five years ago for extortion.”
The name Donald Vance hit me like a jolt of electricity.
“Vance,” I said, standing up from the sofa, making sure not to wake Caleb. “He was the detective assigned to my case. When Caleb went missing, Vance was the one who came to my apartment. He told me the river currents were too strong to recover a body. He told me to stop calling the precinct because I was wasting their time with false hope.”
Richard closed his eyes, a heavy, ragged sigh escaping his lips. “He wasn't investigating the kidnapping, Miss Parker. He was facilitating it. My wife hired him to find Julian’s child, and when she realized you wouldn't give him up, she paid Vance to remove you from the equation entirely.”
“Why?” I whispered, my voice shaking with a mixture of grief and fury. “Why would she go to such horrific lengths just for a child? She hated me. Julian left me because she told him I would ruin their family.”
“Julian is a coward,” Richard said, his voice flat and bitter. “But he is also my only son. Under the terms of my father’s will, if Julian did not produce a legitimate male heir by his thirty-fifth birthday, forty percent of the family’s shares in Beaumont Shipping would automatically revert to my brother’s side of the family—a faction that has been trying to hostilely take over the firm for a decade. Julian’s birthday is next month.”
“So you bought my son to save your stock price,” I said, the disgust in my voice plain and sharp.
“I didn't know, Miss Parker,” Richard said, looking me dead in the eye. “Before God, I believed Eleanor when she told me she had found Julian’s child in an orphanage in Eastern Europe—that the mother had passed away from an illness. I am a hard man, a cynical man, but I do not steal children.”
Before I could answer, the red light on the security monitor began to flash.
Marcus’s voice came through the desk intercom, sharp and hurried. “Mr. Beaumont, we have a breach at the south gate. Two unmarked black SUVs just forced their way through the perimeter. They’re flying corporate security flags from Vanguard Placements.”
Richard’s head snapped up. “Where are Eleanor and Julian?”
“They’re still in the library, sir, but the library windows open onto the south terrace. The intruders aren't trying to get into the main house—they’re extracting them.”
I lunged toward the sofa, scooping Caleb into my arms just as the distant, muffled sound of a gunshot echoed from the gardens below. Caleb woke with a start, screaming as the loud noise rattled the glass panes of the study windows.
“Mommy! The bad men are back!” he sobbed, burying his face in my neck.
“Arthur, take the service elevator down to the wine cellar,” Richard ordered Pendelton, drawing a sleek, silver pistol from his desk drawer with shocking familiarity. “Take Miss Parker and the boy with you. There’s a subterranean tunnel that leads to the old caretaker’s cottage outside the main walls. My private car is parked there.”
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“What about you, Richard?” Pendelton asked, his hands trembling as he clutched his briefcase.
“I’m going to go see my wife,” Richard said, his face hardening into an expression of absolute, terrifying finality. “And then I’m going to fire her.”
