Chapter 2 - THE GREEN FOLDER
I did not read the folder at home.
That was the first sensible decision I made all night.
Lenette took Estelle upstairs.
I called my attorney, Naomi Price.
Then the police.
Not because Lorna had committed some obvious eight-million-dollar crime.
Because my daughter had been forced onto her knees beside broken glass and I needed the scene documented before everyone started rewriting it.
Lorna called me vindictive.
Maybe.
Still called.
The officer reviewed the interior camera footage.
I had forgotten the dining room camera existed.
My security company installed it after a burglary two years earlier.
The footage showed everything.
Lorna entering with a tray.
Estelle appearing at the doorway.
No tantrum.
No broken dishes.
Estelle said something.
Lorna took the tray.
Swept it onto the floor.
Grabbed Estelle’s shoulder.
Pushed her down.
Threw the rag.
Lenette intervened.
Then me.
My slap was there too.
Clear.
Unambiguous.
I told the officer:
“I struck Lorna after the immediate physical danger to Estelle had ended.”
He nodded.
Potential misdemeanor assault.
I would deal with it.
Lorna potentially faced a child-assault or endangerment charge depending on the prosecutor’s assessment.
Separate actions.
Separate accountability.
Estelle’s pediatrician examined her that night.
Bruised shoulder.
No fracture.
No cuts from the broken dishes.
Emotionally shaken.
Physically safe.
That sentence became my oxygen.
Lenette came to the hospital with us.
I asked her:
“Has Lorna done this before?”
She hesitated.
That frightened me.
“What?”
“She’s been cruel.”
“How cruel?”
“She takes food away when Estelle asks for you.”
My stomach turned.
“What?”
“Not every day.”
“Lenette.”
“She says Estelle needs to stop using you as a reward.”
I stared.
“She told me Estelle was refusing dinner lately.”
Lenette’s eyes filled.
“She wasn’t refusing.”
“What was happening?”
“Miss Lorna told the kitchen not to serve her until she finished ‘behavior goals.’”
“What goals?”
“Not interrupting adults. Not asking when you would be home. Not calling your office.”
My chest tightened.
“How long?”
“About six weeks.”
Six weeks.
Exactly when Lorna moved into the house to finalize the wedding.
I had noticed Estelle was thinner at dinner.
I had blamed picky eating.
Work.
Travel.
Everything except the person I planned to marry.
Naomi arrived after midnight.
She carried the green folder in an evidence sleeve.
First document:
Residential placement authorization.
Facility blank.
Duration blank.
Reason:
Adjustment difficulties following parental remarriage.
Second:
Temporary delegation of educational and medical authority.
Third:
Domestic staffing termination plan.
Lenette Foster.
Effective date:
three days after wedding.
Then the money.
Transfer request:
$8,000,000.
From:
Bellamy Family Reserve.
To:
Bellamy-Rollins Strategic Holdings.
Rollins.
Lorna’s maiden name.
I stared.
“Is that real?”
“Draft,” Naomi said. “Unsigned by you.”
“What is Bellamy Family Reserve?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
Naomi looked at me.
“That is going to become a problem.”
I was forty years old.
CEO of Bellamy Lodging Group.
I knew our corporate accounts.
Personal portfolio.
Real estate.
Trust distributions.
I had never heard that exact account title.
The proposed authorization cited:
Guardian household restructuring following marriage.
“What does Estelle have to do with this?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Naomi turned to another page.
A legal memorandum.
Half the paragraphs referred to documents we did not have.
One sentence was highlighted:
Placement of the minor outside Conrad Bellamy’s primary household may simplify independent guardian-review obligations after remarriage.
I looked at the words.
“Independent guardian review of what?”
Naomi closed the folder.
“That is the right question.”
My phone vibrated.
Lorna.
I ignored it.
Then a second message.
You are making a mistake you cannot undo.
Then a third.
Ask your father what Estelle becomes entitled to if you marry me.
My father had been dead for six years.
May you like
Which meant either Lorna was panicking—
or she had been reading documents that my father never showed me.
