Back in the ballroom, paramedics were examining Derek.
One of them asked what he had consumed.
“Champagne,” Vanessa answered.
“Anything else?”
“No.”
I looked at the table.
There were two glasses.
One was mine.
One was Derek’s.
I quietly told Daniel:
“Don’t let anyone touch that glass.”
He nodded.
Then I saw my father approaching.
His face was furious.
Not frightened.
Furious.
He stopped in front of me.
“What did you do?”
Daniel stepped between us.
“What do you mean?”
Richard ignored him.
“Mara, what did you do to your brother?”
I stared at my father.
“Nothing.”
“You switched the glasses.”
My heart skipped.
“How do you know that?”
He didn’t answer.
That silence said everything.
Daniel turned toward him.
“Why would you know she switched them?”
My father’s expression changed.
For the first time, he realized he had revealed too much.
Then Samuel Reed walked into the ballroom.
My grandfather’s attorney.
He approached me calmly.
“Mara.”
My father went pale.
“Why are you here?”
Samuel looked directly at him.
“Because today is the day the trust becomes effective.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Derek, still conscious but barely able to sit upright, looked at Samuel.
“No.”
Samuel’s expression remained cold.
“Yes.”
Derek shook his head.
“No, no, no…”
His eyes moved toward me.
And suddenly I understood.
He hadn’t put something in my champagne because he wanted me dead.
He wanted me unconscious.
He wanted me incapacitated long enough to prevent me from signing the final trust documents.
But why?
Samuel answered before I could ask.
“The financial records have been submitted.”
My father’s face collapsed.
“What financial records?”
Samuel looked at him.
“The ones Harold Caldwell left behind.”
My mother started crying.
Derek whispered:
“Grandpa…”
Chapter Six: The Truth Comes Out
The police arrived shortly afterward.
The paramedics had already taken samples from Derek’s glass.
The substance was sent for testing.
Nobody told us exactly what it was that night.
Only that it wasn’t something anyone should have been consuming.
Derek was taken to the hospital.
My father tried to leave.
Two officers stopped him.
“Sir, we’d like to ask you some questions.”
He looked at me.
His eyes were no longer angry.
They were pleading.
“Mara.”
I didn’t answer.
“Mara, please.”
I had spent thirty years wanting my father to say those words.
Please.
Not because I had done something wrong.
But because he finally needed something from me.
I looked at him.
“You should’ve thought about that before you let Grandpa put everything in my name.”
His face went white.
It was the exact sentence Derek had spoken in the study.
My father stared at me.
He realized I had heard them.
Chapter Seven: What Derek Had Planned
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