Snatched a Billionaire to Be My Husband – Episode 38
Miriam’s claim placed Byron beside Charles on the night of his death, contradicting every timeline they had relied upon during the Lane investigation. Cora did not accuse her husband. She asked Miriam to repeat the exact words she heard and to distinguish memory from assumption.
The call lasted less than a minute. Charles said, “Byron knows where the copy is,” before a male voice in the distance told him to get into the car. Miriam believed the voice belonged to Byron because she later heard him interviewed on television. She had never met him in person at the time.
Byron listened without interruption. He confirmed meeting Charles that week but denied being in the garage. Charles had requested advice about a hostile acquisition involving Vale assets, and Byron referred him to a secure records company. The phrase might have meant Byron knew where the company stored a copy, not that he possessed it personally.
Cora remembered Byron admitting earlier business connections while claiming he never saw evidence that implicated Charles. The distinction remained possible, but it no longer felt sufficient. “Why didn’t you tell me he came to you?” she asked. Byron said the meeting was brief and protected by a confidentiality agreement. After Charles died, the file appeared unrelated to Lane Capital’s fraud.
“You decided it was unrelated,” Cora said. Her anger was quiet because shouting would have been easier. Their wedding vows promised truth, yet Byron had carried one more fragment of her father’s last days without understanding that its importance belonged to her.
He did not defend the omission. “I should have told you when we found the Vale connection.” Regret could not restore the moment when Cora might have heard the information freely. Still, his immediate accountability kept the wound from becoming another argument about whether she deserved to know.
Byron retrieved the archived engagement file from Hansen Holdings. Charles had asked him to identify who was purchasing debt attached to Vale Maritime Relief properties. The buyer used a shell company that later appeared in Malcolm and Helena’s network. Byron traced the transaction to a records warehouse and sent Charles the address.
Security logs placed Byron at a charity dinner across town during the garage call. His voice could not have been the one Miriam heard. The records company, however, employed an account manager named Brian Howell. Through a distorted phone connection, “Brian” could easily have sounded like “Byron.”
Brian had disappeared after Charles’s death. Carter located his last tax filing in a Nevada town and found a recent rental payment made by Vale Family Services. Someone had kept him hidden and financially dependent for years.
Cora wanted to travel with the investigators, but her doctor advised against a same-day flight after stress caused cramping. The restriction infuriated her because it gave everyone a medically respectable reason to exclude her. Byron suggested sending Carter while they participated remotely. He made clear that the choice belonged to Cora, not to his fear.
She stayed. Protecting her pregnancy was her own decision, even when it resembled surrender. Carter and federal agents found Brian in a small desert house, alive and frightened. He agreed to a video interview after receiving witness protection.
Brian said Charles arrived at the warehouse carrying proof that the guardian trust financed Malcolm’s attack on Lane Capital. Before he could copy it, armed men entered with an order bearing Celeste’s signature. Brian escaped through a loading bay, while Charles left with the original file.
Later that night, Charles called to say he had hidden a copy “where Byron sent me.” Brian directed him to the storage company’s private vault under Hansen Holdings’ corporate account. Byron had authorized the account years earlier for confidential acquisition records but had no notice of individual deposits.
The vault still existed beneath the downtown tower. Access required Byron’s biometric approval and the depositor’s key. Charles’s key was not among his recovered effects. Cora examined the photograph from the missing envelope and noticed a small brass key on the chain around Evelyn’s neck.
Evelyn had worn that chain throughout her hospitalization. She believed the key opened a safe-deposit box Charles emptied before his death. It fit the private vault instead. Charles had left the evidence beside the woman he trusted most, hidden in plain sight.
Cora and Byron entered the vault together. His fingerprint opened the outer door; Evelyn’s key released a narrow drawer labeled C.L. Inside lay a drive, a sealed DNA report, and a handwritten statement from Charles. The report already established Roland as Cora’s biological father through a sample obtained during a Vale hospital procedure.
Charles’s statement identified the person who funded Malcolm’s earliest purchases of Lane debt. It was not Celeste, Miriam, or Adrian. The authorization came directly from Roland Vale, issued six months before Charles died.
Before they could read the attached explanation, alarms sealed the vault. Smoke began spilling through the ventilation grates, and the control panel displayed a remote command from the Vale Maritime Relief Archive. Someone at the foundation had trapped Cora and Byron underground on the eve of the inventory.