Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 47
Continuity Trust did not appear in any present-day Taylor registry. The document carried future dates, but the paper, ink, and Derek’s handwriting were current. He had prepared a legal trap using knowledge of a company structure that should not yet exist.
Donald’s attorneys traced the trust name through offshore jurisdictions. An application had been filed the morning after Derek regained his future memories, funded by the last cash he withdrew from Arianna’s account before it was frozen.
The application named Derek as beneficiary if Taylor Industries experienced a disputed succession. It also contained forged signatures from Arianna and Donald. While everyone focused on roads, fires, and poison, he had continued rebuilding the quiet legal path to ownership.
The trust remained incomplete because one director’s certification was missing. Leonard Graves had intended to provide it after forcing the transportation sale. His arrest interrupted the plan, but the unsigned document could still be sold to creditors as proof of a claim.
Derek’s attorney had carried copies overseas before his arrest. A financial firm now demanded payment from Taylor Industries, asserting that Continuity Trust owned options on a third of the company. The claim was fraudulent, yet challenging it across jurisdictions could take years.
Arianna attended an emergency board session from a temporary office while smoke still rose above the mansion. Directors urged Donald to settle quietly before the claim reached investors. She recognized the same fear that had almost approved Leonard’s sale.
“Paying a forged debt teaches every thief that confusion has value,” she said. Donald supported a public challenge, even though disclosure would renew questions about the family’s succession plans.
Hayden offered Scott Global’s international legal team, but Arianna insisted Taylor counsel lead the case. She accepted research support while preserving a boundary Derek always claimed she could not maintain around Hayden.
The offshore firm scheduled a remote authentication hearing. Its representative presented video of Arianna supposedly signing the trust application. The image showed her current face, school uniform, and the Taylor library.
Arianna had never recorded it. The background came from school photographs and mansion security footage, combined by the same tools used to forge Donald’s confession. Derek had prepared another lie that borrowed truth from several places.
Rather than argue about visual flaws, Arianna requested the original biometric signature file. The firm claimed confidentiality prevented release, but the hearing officer ordered production because ownership of a public company was at stake.
The file contained a heartbeat pattern captured when Arianna was hospitalized after her first fatal accident. Derek had stored her medical authentication data in the future and reproduced it from memory as a sequence of numbers.
One number was wrong. Arianna’s heart rhythm had changed after the crash, but present medical records showed no such injury. The signature authenticated a body she had inhabited only in the erased future.
Donald’s lawyers explained the mismatch as fabricated biometric data without mentioning rebirth. The firm’s own experts confirmed the sequence could not belong to Arianna’s current medical history. Continuity Trust’s claim collapsed under the evidence meant to strengthen it.
Investigators added fraud and attempted corporate theft to Derek’s charges. His defense argued Victor supplied the documents and manipulated a frightened teenager. The archive records showed otherwise: Derek created the trust before contacting Victor after the gala.
Arianna requested one final monitored meeting. She placed the invalidated application before Derek and asked whether owning Taylor Industries had ever been about money. He answered that the company was proof he had risen above the driver’s quarters.
“You could have built something of your own,” she said. Derek laughed bitterly. Building took years, while she had been born into everything. His resentment could imagine only theft as justice because equality without domination felt insufficient.
She told him the company would never become evidence of his worth. Derek responded that Hayden’s inherited empire was no different. Arianna agreed that inheritance did not prove virtue, which was why choices mattered more than ownership.
For once, Derek had no threat ready. His future memories had given him knowledge of accounts, signatures, and deaths, but not the ability to understand why Arianna no longer feared life without him.
As she left, a guard delivered a sealed notice to Derek’s attorney. Victor had offered to testify that Derek masterminded the entire network in exchange for a reduced sentence. The alliance that destroyed Arianna’s first life had begun devouring itself.