Chapter 9 - Arthur Sloan Calls From Inside
Police issued warrants for Arthur.
Airports were alerted.
His photograph circulated.
Then Claire’s home phone rang.
She answered on speaker.
Arthur’s voice was calm.
“You opened Charles’s letter.”
Claire looked at Rachel.
Investigators were already tracing the call.
“Yes.”
Arthur sighed.
“Madeline should have burned it.”
Madeline stepped closer.
“You used me.”
Arthur laughed softly.
“You used me first.”
He reminded her of every secret she asked him to bury.
Michael’s parentage.
Charles’s accounts.
The internal case against Michael.
Claire’s power-of-attorney paperwork.
Arthur had become the family’s professional keeper of uncomfortable facts.
Over time, he learned the Bennett family would choose secrecy almost every time.
He built his plan around that.
Ethan asked:
“Why Lucy?”
“I never intended to hurt Lucy.”
Claire’s voice sharpened.
“You forged permission to remove her from the country.”
“I needed the clause activated.”
“She’s six.”
“She was never the target.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
Arthur went silent.
Then Sophia spoke.
“Did you manipulate my pregnancy too?”
Arthur hesitated.
That hesitation frightened her.
He admitted learning about Michael and Sophia.
When Sophia later began seeing Ethan, Arthur realized a pregnancy could create chaos inside the marriage.
But he denied causing it or arranging the affair.
He did, however, tell Madeline to encourage Sophia’s closeness with Ethan.
Madeline looked horrified.
“You said it would make Ethan easier to control during the investigation.”
“And it did.”
Ethan looked at his mother.
The affair remained his choice.
But Arthur had understood everyone’s weaknesses.
Madeline’s obsession with protecting the company.
Ethan’s unhappy marriage.
Sophia’s vulnerability.
Michael’s resentment.
Grace’s father’s debt.
He did not create every flaw.
He connected them.
Claire asked:
“Where are you?”
Arthur ignored her.
Instead he said:
“The house was never the prize.”
“What was?”
“The company.”
Then a sound came through the phone.
A grandfather clock chimed.
Claire knew that clock.
Everyone did.
It stood in the old Bennett Capital executive residence across town.
The property had been empty since Charles died.
Police moved.
Arthur had not fled New York.
He had been hiding inside the family’s oldest house.
When officers entered, they found him in Charles Bennett’s former study.
No gunfight.
No dramatic escape.
Arthur sat beside a fireplace with files arranged across the desk.
He surrendered.
But one file was missing.
The option agreement.
Arthur had burned the original minutes before police arrived.
May you like
Fortunately, Charles’s copy remained.
For the first time in twenty-seven years, Arthur Sloan no longer controlled the only version of the truth.
