Chapter 6
Anouk remembered the red folder.
Not because anyone questioned her.
Because she saw a folder on television and said:
“Seraphina had one like that.”
Maximilian was sitting beside her eating cereal.
He put his spoon down.
Dr. Kane had taught him what to do.
Not interrogate.
Not reward.
Not show alarm.
“What do you remember about it?”
Anouk shrugged.
“It was Daddy’s.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Your R was on it.”
The Rourke family seal appeared on many archive folders.
Maximilian waited.
Anouk continued.
“She got mad when I saw.”
“Okay.”
“That’s when stairs started.”
Maximilian felt anger press against his ribs.
He did not ask more.
He wrote the statement down after she left for school tutoring.
Claire later compared the comment to the archive inventory.
One red leather folder was missing.
Not obvious at first because its contents had been digitized years earlier.
The folder contained old handwritten account notes from Maximilian’s father.
Historical transactions.
Names.
Amounts.
Some benign.
Others harder to explain.
The originals had remained because outside counsel wanted preservation.
Seraphina may have taken them.
Her suitcase inventory did not contain the folder.
That meant it had gone somewhere else.
Felix Arden became more relevant when Daniel found a hotel-room delivery receipt among Seraphina’s documents.
A courier delivered a small sealed package to Felix’s office two days before Maximilian returned.
Sender listed:
S. Holt.
Claire subpoenaed details through the civil dispute.
Felix’s lawyer resisted.
Expected.
Meanwhile, Maximilian called a meeting with leaders of his legitimate businesses.
He told them something nobody expected.
“There may be historical family documents released.”
One executive looked terrified.
“What kind?”
“Old.”
“Criminal?”
“Possibly embarrassing. Possibly worse.”
The CFO asked:
“Are they authentic?”
“Some may be.”
Silence.
Maximilian continued.
“I’m ordering outside review now.”
His cousin Vincent objected.
“You don’t open internal archives because an angry woman threatens gossip.”
Maximilian looked at him.
“She is not the reason.”
“What is?”
“My daughter spent four nights inside a storage compartment while everyone in my house assumed my fiancée had authority because she slept in my room.”
Vincent stared.
Maximilian continued.
“I’m done treating secrecy as proof of strength.”
Several men disliked that.
Good.
Forensic counsel was appointed.
Historical documents would be reviewed before Seraphina could choose which ones mattered.
May you like
It was not yet the irreversible decision.
But it pointed directly toward it.
