Chapter 4 - THE SISTER WHO CHOSE THE WRONG SIDE
Julian left the villa before police arrived.
He told Chloe he had a client meeting in Atlanta. His flight reservation showed a connection through Miami and a final destination in Panama City.
Chloe found the itinerary because he had used her airline account.
She also found a second phone inside his suitcase.
Instead of calling me immediately, she called Diane.
That choice told me where her loyalty still rested.
Diane ordered her to destroy the phone and say Julian had left before the funeral. Chloe carried it to the pool deck, removed the case and stood over the water for several minutes.
She did not drop it.
By the time she called Maya, Julian was already on the highway.
Federal investigators intercepted him at Charleston International Airport based on the attempted access to controlled technical data. He was questioned and his devices were seized, but he was not immediately charged. Attempting to open a protected file was suspicious; investigators still needed to prove why he did it and what he intended to remove.
Chloe agreed to meet us at the hotel.
She placed Julian’s second phone on the table without looking at me.
“I didn’t know about the defective parts.”
“But you knew he wanted David’s test report.”
“He said it was inaccurate. He said David had a personal grudge against him.”
“David barely spoke to him.”
“That’s not what Julian told me.”
The phone contained messages between Julian and Diane.
For months, he had encouraged my mother’s belief that I was incapable of managing David’s estate. In exchange, Diane supplied information about my schedule, medications and work habits.
Julian promised that once Robert controlled the trust, Chloe and my parents could continue living at the villa indefinitely.
He had offered them a future financed by property that did not belong to them.
Chloe’s own messages were harder to read.
She told Julian when I attended medical appointments. She photographed the study. She helped Diane write the competency statement.
Her motive was not only greed.
She had spent our entire childhood hearing that I was the difficult daughter who somehow received the better life. David loved me openly. He respected my work. He bought a house our parents could never have afforded.
Chloe resented me long before Julian gave that resentment a purpose.
“I thought David left you everything,” she said. “I thought you’d sell the villa, disappear with millions and leave Mom and Dad with nothing.”
“They were guests here.”
“They called it their retirement home.”
“They called many things theirs.”
Maya asked Chloe why she had preserved the phone.
Chloe rested one hand on her stomach as if she felt sick.
“Julian told me David’s death had solved one problem. Last night, he said we only needed Clara out of the way to solve the other.”
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The second problem was the test report.
The first, we now feared, had been David himself.
