Chapter 10 - The Ashford Boardroom
Claire entered Ashford Pharmaceutical wearing the only black suit she owned before marrying Ethan.
Vanessa was waiting in the lobby.
“Still dressing like a receptionist?”
Claire glanced at Vanessa’s designer coat. “Still confusing price tags with personality?”
Ethan coughed into his hand to hide a laugh.
Upstairs, Victor Ashford sat at the head of a forty-foot table.
He was sixty-three, silver-haired, elegant, and looked enough like Claire around the eyes to make her skin crawl.
“So,” he said. “Amelia’s ghost finally learned to walk.”
Claire sat across from him. “You knew I existed.”
“I knew my sister was unstable.”
Ethan’s voice turned cold. “Choose your next words carefully.”
Victor smiled. “Vale. Of course. The husband.”
The board challenged Claire’s birth certificate, the chain of custody on Amelia’s files, and Thomas Bennett’s account.
Then Victor produced DNA results claiming Claire had no genetic relationship to the Ashford family.
For one second, Claire felt the floor vanish.
Nora took the report.
“This lab received the sample yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
Victor’s attorney answered, “A preserved tissue sample belonging to Amelia Ashford.”
Claire frowned. “You have her tissue?”
Nobody responded.
Ethan noticed it too.
Nora leaned forward. “If you have authenticated biological material from Amelia, why was it never submitted during the missing-person investigation?”
Victor’s confidence flickered.
Claire smiled slowly.
“You just made a mistake.”
The meeting ended without a vote after Nora demanded independent testing.
In the elevator, Ethan said, “He expected the DNA report to scare you away.”
“It almost did.”
“But?”
“But he knew exactly where to find my mother’s tissue after pretending for thirty years that nobody knew what happened to her.”
They sent Claire’s sample to three independent labs and requested a court order to test Edmund Ashford’s archived medical sample.
That evening, Claire received a call from an unknown woman.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” the woman said.
“Who is this?”
“You want to know whether Amelia was your mother.”
Claire gripped the phone.
“She was.”
“Then what question should I ask?”
May you like
A pause.
“Ask why Victor has spent thirty years making sure nobody finds out Amelia Ashford is still alive.”
