Chapter 3 - The Paper Trail
Three days later, I was discharged from St. Vincent’s in a wheelchair.
Ethan had brought a soft, oversized navy sweatshirt and cotton sweatpants for me to wear over my heavy bandaged torso. As he pushed me through the sliding glass doors of the hospital lobby into the crisp Portland rain, two local news reporters attempted to approach us, their cameras flashing through the gray mist.
"Mrs. Monroe! Did your sister plan the attack?"
"Ethan! Is it true your mother-in-law tried to bribe venue staff to delete the security footage?"
Ethan didn't say a word. He maneuvered the wheelchair swiftly to our Subaru, shielded me with his body as I climbed painfully into the passenger seat, and loaded my small bag into the trunk before driving away from the media circus.
Our apartment in Northwest Portland felt like an absolute sanctuary. The scent of familiar lavender candles, the quiet hum of our refrigerator, the stack of unopened wedding presents sitting near the entryway—it felt like a life belonging to two completely different people.
Ethan helped me onto the living room sofa, placing three plush pillows behind my back before rushing off to the kitchen to fetch my prescription pain medicine and a glass of water.
"You don't have to hover, babe," I said softly, giving him a weary smile as he handed me the small blue pill.
"I'm going to hover for at least the next six months," Ethan replied firmly, sitting on the coffee table directly in front of me. "It's in the marriage contract. Section 4, Clause B."
I let out a quiet laugh, though the movement pulled slightly at my side. "I don't remember signing that."
"You did. It was right after you said 'I do'."
The doorbell rang.
Ethan’s smile vanished instantly. He stood up, his hand reaching into his pocket for his phone as he walked toward the hallway peephole.
"It's Jenna," he called back, his shoulders relaxing as he unlocked the triple deadbolt.
My maid of honor burst into the apartment carrying a massive tote bag stuffed with folders, a laptop, and two large paper bags from our favorite Thai restaurant.
"Claire!" Jenna dropped the bags on the dining table and ran over to the sofa, carefully wrapping her arms around my neck without touching my left side. "Oh my God, look at you. You look... surprisingly un-dead."
"High praise," I smiled, holding her tight. "Thank you for coming."
"Are you kidding? I’ve been living in a police station waiting room for forty-eight hours trying to get updates!" Jenna sat on the edge of the couch, pulling a thick yellow expandable folder from her bag. "And I brought gifts."
Ethan walked back in, leaning against the kitchen counter. "What kind of gifts?"
"The kind that will make Richard Vance throw up his morning espresso," Jenna said with a dark, vengeful grin.
She opened the yellow folder and laid several printed documents across the coffee table in front of me.
"What are these?" I asked, picking up the top page. It was a printed bank statement from a joint account bearing my father's name—and Vanessa’s.
"After you guys were taken to the hospital," Jenna explained, her voice turning sharp and precise, "your mom tried to get me to hand over the master flash drive from the wedding videographer. She told me it was 'family property' and that she needed to keep it safe from the press."
"She tried to take the videographer's raw footage?" Ethan asked, his jaw clenching.
"Yep. But she forgot that I paid the deposit for the videographer on my credit card as my wedding gift to you guys," Jenna said, smirking. "So I told her to go kick rocks. Then I realized... if Evelyn was that desperate to hide video, what else were they hiding?"
Jenna tapped the bank statement on the table.
"I called my cousin Sarah—you know, the forensic accountant who works for the state auditor's office? I gave her the public land records for your dad’s commercial real estate firm, Bennett Development LLC."
I leaned over the pages. The numbers listed under monthly wire transfers were astronomical.
"For the last eighteen months," Jenna revealed, pointing her finger at a series of transactions highlighted in yellow, "your father has been transferring fifteen thousand dollars a month from the company’s primary operating account into a private offshore trust registered in the Cayman Islands. And guess who the sole named beneficiary of that trust is?"
I stared at the name printed on the legal filing: Vanessa Evelyn Bennett.
"Fifteen thousand a month?" I gasped. "That's... that's almost three hundred thousand dollars a year!"
"Why would my father be secretly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Vanessa?" I looked up at Ethan.
Ethan stepped closer, picking up the document. His eyes scanned the dates of the transfers. "Look at when they started, Claire."
I looked at the top line.
March 14th, 2025.
My breath caught in my throat.
"March 14th," I whispered. "That was the exact day Ethan and I got engaged in our kitchen."
"The exact day," Jenna confirmed, leaning back against the sofa cushions. "The moment you announced you were getting married and building your own life away from the Bennett empire, your father started draining his company's liquid assets into a private account for your sister."
"It wasn't a gift," Ethan realized out loud, his eyes widening with sudden, horrifying comprehension. "It was blackmail."
I stared at the paper. "Blackmail? Why would Vanessa be blackmailing my father?"
Before Jenna could answer, my phone buzzed on the side table.
May you like
It wasn't a text message. It was an email notification from an unknown, encrypted email address with a subject line that made my blood run stone cold:
Subject: The truth about Arthur's estate before the trial begins.
