The Locked Study
Chapter 06 - The Locked Study
Sophia returned to the mansion with Adrian and a private attorney.
Richard had locked himself inside the study.
Smoke rose from the stone fireplace.
Sophia pounded on the door.
“Open it.”
No answer.
Adrian forced the latch with a brass letter opener.
Richard stood beside the fire holding a folder.
Vanessa was near the desk, crying.
“I tried to stop him.”
Adrian pulled the folder from Richard’s hand.
The edges had burned, but the center remained readable.
Payments to Martin Voss.
Clinic invoices.
Annual reports about Emma.
Richard had monitored his granddaughter for fifteen years while allowing Sophia to mourn her death.
Sophia faced her father.
“Why invite her tonight?”
Richard sank into a chair.
“Because she threatened to go public.”
“So you planned to lie again.”
“I planned to protect the company.”
“From what?”
“A scandal involving forged adoption records could destroy every negotiation we have spent years building.”
Sophia looked around the study where she had signed her first corporate contract at twenty-six.
The company had always been Richard’s answer to every moral question.
He called it legacy.
Sophia now saw it as hunger wearing a respectable suit.
Vanessa lifted another file from the desk.
“This was in the safe.”
It contained medical records from the night Sophia gave birth.
The baby was born premature but stable.
There was no death certificate.
A note signed by Richard instructed the clinic to record the infant as transferred for specialist care.
Adrian read the final page.
A nurse had objected.
Her name was Maria Delgado.
Two weeks after the birth, Maria was fired.
Sophia remembered her.
A young nurse with kind eyes who whispered, “I’m sorry,” as orderlies rolled Sophia out of the delivery room.
“We need to find her,” Sophia said.
Richard looked up.
“She will not help you.”
“Why?”
“Because Voss paid her to leave the country.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No. He paid her to disappear from New York.”
Everyone turned.
May you like
Vanessa held up a recent payroll record.
Maria Delgado had been working for Bennett Development under another name for eleven years.
