Chapter 4 - The hidden clause
Within the hour, the heavy brass knocker on the study door echoed through the room. Nicholas’s senior attorney, a sharp-featured white American man with silver hair, stepped inside. He moved with urgent purpose, carrying a heavy, leather-bound file. He placed it directly on the center of Nicholas’s massive mahogany desk.
Maria sat quietly on the edge of the sofa, gently stroking Lucy’s curly blonde hair as the little girl dozed off, exhausted by the afternoon's trauma. Nicholas stood by the desk, his gray eyes scanning the worn, yellowed pages of the old Moretti family trust file.
"You needed to see this immediately, Nicholas," the attorney said, tapping a specific paragraph on the aged paper. "I received an automated alert from the family estate registry this morning. Someone initiated a transfer of the primary syndicate assets."
Nicholas frowned, resting his hands on the desk. "That is impossible. I am the sole head of this family."
"You are," the attorney agreed, his tone tense. "Unless a forgotten contingency is met. Look right here. The old generation put a safeguard in place decades ago. If a direct Moretti descendant, under the age of five, resides within the main estate walls for thirty consecutive days, absolute control of the trust and the entire syndicate transfers to that child's designated guardian."
Nicholas processed the words, his sharp masculine features hardening. He slowly turned his head to look across the room at the small, sleeping blonde girl in the pink dress.
"Today is day twenty-nine," Nicholas stated quietly.
"Exactly," the attorney replied. "At the stroke of midnight tonight, she hits day thirty. The entire empire will shift."
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Nicholas looked back at the paperwork, his mind racing. "But the clause requires the child to be a direct Moretti descendant. Lucy is the daughter of a hired maid."
"That is what I thought," the attorney said, pulling a secondary file from his briefcase. "Until I found this."
