Chapter 2: The Anatomy of a Decoy
The following hours were a blur of calculated movements. Daniel didn't confront Victoria—not yet. He moved with a cold efficiency, calling his own private physician and a discreet contact within the District Attorney’s office. He understood that Victoria was not acting alone; she was the face of a corporate takeover, a puppet dancing on the strings of the firm’s board of directors who wanted Daniel out of the picture.
While Amelia was attended to in the upstairs wing, Daniel sat in the study, reviewing his father’s final days. He realized the "misunderstandings" Victoria had engineered weren't just about him—they were about liquidating the company’s assets before an impending federal audit. The pregnancy was the target not because of a personal vendetta, but because it threatened to pass the controlling shares of the estate to a new heir, effectively blocking Victoria’s plan to sell the firm to international conglomerates.
He began to piece together the paper trail. Every "charitable donation" Victoria had made from the family fund was a payment to a laboratory in Zurich. She wasn't just a socialite; she was a meticulously trained predator who had been weeding out potential successors one by one. The champagne wasn't a one-time attempt; it was the final step in a legacy of liquid death
