Chapter 13 - The Notary Who Remembered Too MuchArnold Slade lived in a retirement community in Boca Raton and answered Ava’s subpoena by pretending to have memory problems.
Unfortunately for him, Ava Monroe had very little patience for convenient dementia.
By the next morning, she had investigators outside his condo, financial records showing deposits from Beatrice’s shell foundations, and a retired nurse willing to testify that Mr. Slade was sharp enough to beat three people at chess every Tuesday.
The judge ordered a remote deposition.
Arnold appeared on screen wearing a cardigan, thick glasses, and the frightened expression of a man realizing retirement might not protect him from prison.
Ava began politely.
That was how I knew she was going to destroy him.
“Mr. Slade, do you recognize this document?”
He squinted. “Hard to say.”
“It bears your notary seal.”
“I notarized many documents.”
“This one states that Emma Harrington signed away controlling shares in Harrington & Vale on April 14.”
“If my seal is there, I suppose she did.”
Ava nodded. “Do you see Mrs. Harrington on this video call?”
Arnold looked at me.
His eyes flickered to my bruise.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever met her?”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Beatrice’s attorney interrupted. “Objection to tone.”
Ava smiled. “This is not trial, counsel. It’s a deposition. He may answer.”
Arnold swallowed.
“I don’t recall.”
Ava shared a screen.
Hospital records.
Security logs.
Time-stamped footage of me entering Lenox Hill at 2:47 p.m. and leaving at 4:22 p.m.
“Mrs. Harrington could not have appeared before you at 3:15 p.m.,” Ava said. “So I’ll ask again. Did you notarize her signature in person?”
Arnold’s lips trembled.
“I relied on identification provided.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t recall.”
Ava produced the Moreau settlement.
“Do you recall Julian Moreau?”
Arnold’s face collapsed.
There it was.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Ava leaned forward.
“Mr. Slade, you are currently exposed to charges involving fraud, conspiracy, and potentially kidnapping if forged documents were used to restrain Mr. Moreau or Mr. Harrington. This is your opportunity to remember before someone else remembers for you.”
Beatrice’s attorney shouted another objection.
Arnold removed his glasses.
For a moment, he looked less like a criminal and more like a tired old man crushed under the weight of every signature he had sold.
“Beatrice brought the documents,” he said.
The room went silent.
Ava did not blink.
“Which documents?”
“All of them.”
My heart hammered.
“My share transfer?”
“Yes.”
“Julian Moreau’s settlement?”
“Yes.”
“Thomas Harrington’s psychiatric consent papers?”
My father’s face went white.
Arnold nodded.
A sound escaped me.
My father reached for my hand under the table.
I held on.
Ava’s voice remained steady. “Did Beatrice Harrington instruct you to notarize signatures without the signers present?”
“Yes.”
“Did she provide forged signatures?”
“Yes.”
“Who created them?”
Arnold hesitated.
Ava waited.
The silence became unbearable.
Then Arnold said:
“Celeste.”
Every eye turned.
Celeste sat near the back of the room with Milo beside her, a coloring book open on his lap.
Her face drained of color.
“No,” she whispered.
Arnold leaned toward the screen. “She made the copies. She had the handwriting samples. Beatrice said Clara trained her.”
Celeste stood. “I never forged Emma’s signature.”
Beatrice’s attorney seized the moment. “This deposition has become prejudicial—”
Ava cut in. “Mr. Slade, did you personally watch Celeste create Emma Harrington’s signature?”
“No.”
“Did you watch her create Julian Moreau’s?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
Arnold looked cornered. “Beatrice said.”
Ava’s smile returned.
Small.
Lethal.
“So your testimony is that Beatrice Harrington supplied forged documents, paid you to notarize them, and blamed Celeste for the handwriting.”
Arnold realized too late what he had done.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Celeste sat down slowly.
Milo reached for her hand.
I watched her fingers close around his.
I still did not trust her completely.
But I knew what it felt like to have someone else wear your name while committing a crime.
After the deposition ended, Ava filed an emergency criminal referral.
Beatrice’s attorneys stopped returning calls for exactly forty-three minutes.
Then Beatrice made her next move.
She leaked a private medical record claiming my father had been diagnosed with paranoid delusions.
Within an hour, headlines shifted.
DEAD BILLIONAIRE RETURNS AMID MENTAL HEALTH QUESTIONS.
TRUST BATTLE TURNS BIZARRE.
WIFE ACCUSES HUSBAND AFTER PUBLIC INCIDENT.
Ava warned me not to read comments.
I read them anyway.
Some called me brave.
Some called me greedy.
Some said Nathan looked too handsome to be abusive.
Some said my father was clearly fake.
Some said rich people deserved each other.
Public opinion is not justice.
But it can poison the air justice breathes.
That night, my father sat in the medical suite watching the news with the sound off.
“I should have come back sooner,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
He looked at me.
I did not soften it.
He nodded.
“You’re like your mother.”
“No,” I said. “I’m what happened after she was gone.”
He absorbed that like a deserved blow.
Then he reached into his coat and removed a folded paper.
“I need to show you something.”
It was a birth certificate.
Mine.
Emma Rose Harrington.
Father: Thomas Harrington.
Mother: Clara Harrington.
But clipped behind it was a second document.
A sealed adoption petition.
Unfiled.
Unsigned.
I looked at him, confused.
“What is this?”
My father’s eyes filled with pain.
“Beatrice was right about one thing. Your mother did choose the first victim.”
I stared at the paper.
Then I saw the name.
May you like
Biological father: Julian Moreau.
The room disappeared beneath me.
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