Chapter 4: What the First Will Said
I did not ask Raymond about the message that night.
I went back to the temporary apartment Marina had arranged for my recovery, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought carefully about what I actually knew versus what I was being told to feel.
Celeste was intelligent.
The call had proven that.
She had volunteered information about Dorian Marsh — information that was true and that we would have found anyway — because giving us something real made everything else she said feel credible.
That was the structure of a threat designed by someone who understood how trust worked.
The question was whether the message about my father's will was the same kind of move: true enough to unsettle, vague enough to control.
I called Marina at seven the next morning.
"I need my father's probate file.
The original.
Not the summary Raymond's office prepared — the actual court filing."
"I can request it from the county clerk's office."
"Do it today.
And Marina — don't go through Raymond's office to get it."
A pause.
"Understood."
The file arrived by courier the following afternoon.
I sat at the kitchen table and read it page by page.
Most of it was exactly what I remembered: the lakefront estate, the investment accounts, the art collection, the company shares — all transferred to me as sole heir following my father's passing four years ago.
Then I reached the amendment page.
My father had filed a codicil to his will eight months before he died.
I had never seen it.
Raymond had never mentioned it.
The codicil named a second beneficiary.
**Nora Voss.**
I did not recognize the name.
Marina arrived twenty minutes later.
I showed her the page without speaking.
She read it.
"Who is Nora Voss?"
"I don't know."
"Did your father ever mention her?"
"Never."
Marina sat down across from me.
"Raymond processed the estate.
He would have seen this codicil."
"Yes," I said.
"He would have."
I called Raymond's direct line.
He answered on the second ring.
"Vivian.
How are you feeling?"
"I have the original probate file in front of me," I said.
"I'm looking at a codicil my father filed eight months before he died.
It names someone called Nora Voss as a secondary beneficiary.
Can you explain why I'm seeing this for the first time today?"
Silence.
Not the silence of someone thinking.
The silence of someone deciding.
"That codicil was contested," Raymond said finally.
"Your father's physician filed a declaration that he was not of sound mind when he signed it.
The court set it aside.
It had no legal effect on your inheritance."
"Why didn't you tell me it existed?"
"Because it was irrelevant.
It was set aside before probate closed."
"Raymond." I kept my voice flat.
"Who is Nora Voss?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"She was a woman your father knew.
Before your mother.
They had a relationship that ended before you were born.
She contacted him near the end of his life."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Are you telling me my father had a child with her?"
"The codicil didn't specify a relationship.
Only a name and a financial allocation."
"That is not an answer."
"Vivian, I genuinely do not know if there was a child.
What I know is that the codicil was invalidated and your inheritance was unaffected."
"And Celeste knows about this."
He didn't answer immediately.
That was its own answer.
"If Dorian gave her access to the full file," Raymond said carefully, "then yes.
She would have seen the codicil.
She would have seen the contested declaration.
She would know it exists even if it carries no legal weight."
I looked at the page in front of me.
My father's signature.
Eight months before he died.
A name I had never heard.
"Find out who Nora Voss is," I said.
"And find out if she has any connection to Celeste Grant."
I ended the call.
Marina was watching me from across the table.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Not entirely," I said.
It was the most honest thing I had said in days.
My phone lit up.
May you like
A number I did recognize this time.
Adrian.
