Chapter 3 - A Midnight Encounter with Maria and the Real Reason Vivienne Wanted Bruno Gone
At 1:30 a.m., after confirming that the master bedroom lights were out and
Vivienne was fast asleep under the influence of her usual sleep medication, I
walked silently down the carpeted servants’ corridor.
I knocked once, very gently, on the door of Room 4.
The door opened almost instantly. Maria stood there in her robe, dark circles
framing her terrified eyes. She had clearly been waiting for me.
“Mr. Adrian,” she whispered, glancing frantically toward the empty hallway.
“Please... I didn't want to lose my job. Miss Vivienne told me if I said a
single word about what Sofia saw, she would have ICE deport my family and tell
the police I stole her diamond necklace.”
“Come inside, Maria. No one is deporting you, and no one is taking your job,” I
said firmly, stepping into the modest room.
Sofia was fast asleep in her small bed, clutching a worn stuffed bear.
“Tell me everything that happened on Thursday night,” I commanded quietly.
Maria swallowed hard, wiping a tear from her cheek. “Around nine o'clock, Miss
Vivienne told all the kitchen staff to take the rest of the night off and stay
in our wing. But Sofia woke up thirsty around ten, so I walked down the back
service hall to get a carton of milk from the pantry.”
“And what did you see?”
“I heard Bruno whimpering in the courtyard,” Maria whispered, her hands shaking.
“Bruno never whimpers. I looked through the frosted window of the delivery
doors. Miss Vivienne was standing in the rain with Mr. Julian. Mr. Julian had a
long steel pole with a loop on the end—like the kind animal control uses. Bruno
was lying on his side on the wet gravel, struggling to stand. He looked drugged,
Mr. Adrian. His legs couldn't hold him up.”
My knuckles cracked as I balled my fists in my pockets. “Did Julian put him in
the vehicle?”
“Yes,” Maria choked out. “They wrapped him in a heavy blue tarp, lifted him into
the back of Mr. Julian’s black SUV, and Julian said something to Miss Vivienne
before he slammed the trunk.”
“What did he say?”
“Julian said: ‘The vet in Rhinebeck is waiting. Once the blood tests are run and
the beast is buried on the back forty, the trust clause dissolves. Adrian will
have no reason to delay the wedding.’”
My breath stopped cold.
The trust clause.
The pieces slammed together in my mind with the force of a freight train.
Eighteen months ago, when my grandfather passed away and left me the controlling
stake in Vance Logistics—a three-hundred-million-dollar empire—his will
contained an unusual, eccentric stipulation. My grandfather, who had raised
Bruno from a pup alongside me, knew that predatory socialites and corporate
sharks would circle my inheritance.
The trust clause stated that eighty million dollars in liquid private assets
remained tied to Bruno’s lifelong care. If Bruno died of natural causes while in
my sole custody, the trust funds were immediately freed to my general estate.
But more critically: under my grandfather’s bylaws, if I married before Bruno’s
passing, the estate was protected by an ironclad prenuptial agreement; however,
if Bruno passed away prior to my marriage, the entire eighty-million-dollar
trust automatically rolled into the joint marital assets on the day of the
wedding.
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Vivienne hadn't just gotten rid of a dog she disliked.
She and Julian had orchestrated Bruno’s abduction and planned euthanasia to
unlock an eighty-million-dollar fortune the moment she walked down the aisle
with me next month.
