Chapter 5
Tyler became the unexpected source of the next clue.
Rebecca brought him to Laura’s apartment because he wanted to apologize to Caleb.
The boys sat on the living room floor with toy cars between them.
Tyler pushed a red one toward Caleb.
“You can have this.”
Caleb looked at it.
“Why?”
“Because Grandma gave it to me after she took your train.”
Caleb frowned.
“My train?”
Tyler nodded.
“Your blue one.”
Caleb looked at Dominic.
Dominic remembered the toy.
A collector-grade electric train given to Caleb by an old family friend.
It disappeared from the Marino estate six months earlier.
Everyone assumed it had been misplaced during renovations.
Tyler said Evelyn gave it to him.
Rebecca went pale.
“I never saw that.”
“She keeps it at her house,” Tyler said.
Dominic asked carefully, “What else does Grandma keep there?”
Tyler began listing things.
A silver picture frame.
Caleb’s christening bracelet.
Several family photographs.
A small box of documents he was told never to touch.
Rebecca interrupted.
“What documents?”
Tyler shrugged.
“Grandma says they’re for when Uncle Dominic finds out.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“Finds out what?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
That afternoon Dominic asked Andrew whether Evelyn possessed any legal documents related to Caleb.
“She shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t isn’t an answer.”
Andrew checked.
Then called back.
Months earlier, Evelyn requested copies of Dominic’s old estate plan.
The version drafted before Caleb’s birth.
That older plan left a much larger portion of family assets to Rebecca and her descendants if Dominic died without recognized children.
Dominic understood immediately.
Before Caleb existed legally within the plan, Tyler was positioned to inherit indirectly through Rebecca.
After Caleb was born, that changed.
The old documents had no legal power anymore.
But Evelyn was preserving them.
Why?
Sentiment?
Leverage?
Fantasy?
Dominic refused to guess.
He did something harder.
May you like
He scheduled a formal review of every asset, trust, ownership interest, beneficiary designation, and estate document Evelyn had ever attempted to influence.
If she had spent years turning children against one another because of inheritance assumptions, Dominic wanted facts before confrontation.
