Chapter 7 - THE GUARDIAN
Dr. Price pushed Noah’s bed into a supply room while Ortiz drew her weapon.
“Stay low,” she ordered.
Emergency lights flickered red. Footsteps moved down the corridor.
A masked man appeared at the far end and fired. Ortiz returned fire, forcing him behind a corner. Evelyn locked the supply-room door and shoved a cabinet against it.
Noah gripped her hand. “Daniel chose you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“He did.”
A second attacker entered through a side stairwell. Mason, who had followed the ambulance, tackled him before he reached the room. The two crashed into a medicine cart. Ortiz arrested one; the other escaped through an alley.
The captured man carried a Whitmore security badge.
His name was Owen Pike, head of the estate’s night team.
Under questioning, Pike admitted Grant paid him to disable fire alarms, move Noah’s wheelchair, and lock the bedroom after Evelyn entered.
“Why after she entered?” Ortiz asked.
Pike looked at Evelyn. “They wanted both of them dead. Then they planned to blame her for kidnapping the boy and starting the fire.”
The plan was clean, cruel, and almost perfect.
By sunrise, Charles, Victoria, and Grant had disappeared.
Their lawyers claimed they were cooperating from a secure location.
Ortiz called it flight.
A probate judge reviewed Daniel’s video, the will, Noah’s medical records, and the bedroom footage. At an emergency hearing held inside the clinic, the judge temporarily removed the Whitmore family as trustees.
“Ms. Brooks,” the judge said, “until a full hearing, you are Noah Whitmore’s legal guardian and acting controller of the Whitmore voting trust.”
Evelyn, who had spent eleven years changing sheets and arranging flowers, suddenly held power over a forty-billion-dollar empire.
Her first order was simple.
“Freeze every family account connected to the trust.”
Across the city, credit cards stopped working. Private planes were grounded. Company security access was canceled.
Ten minutes later, Evelyn’s phone rang from an unknown number.
Charles spoke calmly.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
Evelyn looked at Noah.
“No,” she said. “You tried to burn what belongs to him.”
Charles’s voice turned cold.
“Then come find him.”
May you like
Evelyn turned toward the bed.
Noah was gone.
