Chapter 9 - CLAIRE'S BOX
The bank manager remembered Nathan Bellmont. He had arrived with lawyers, threatened injunctions, and produced an emergency family-trust order.
By the time we got there, he was gone.
Inside the empty box was a false bottom.
If Nathan opens this before you, he is still afraid of the truth.
We played the card in the bank conference room.
Claire appeared on screen seven years younger.
"Vanessa, if you're seeing this, I failed to get Amelia safely home."
Claire explained she had followed Nathan to the clinic after overhearing him arguing with Crane.
She found me alive.
"Your father did not cause the explosion," Claire said. "But he chose the lie afterward."
She helped me escape.
She hid copies of Blue Meridian records.
Nathan had begun transferring founder assets using my presumed death.
He needed me gone until the seven-year reversion date.
"If I die, do not assume it was him."
Claire believed Pike was blackmailing Nathan.
Pike had footage proving Nathan kept me alive and hidden.
In return, Nathan protected Blue Meridian.
Then Claire said, "Ethan Ward tried to help me."
She had contacted him anonymously.
He provided a service map.
He did not know who she was.
That map helped her get me out.
"I helped you?"
"Yes," Vanessa whispered.
For the first time, the guilt in his face loosened.
"The original Blue Meridian ownership certificate is hidden where Nathan will never look."
In the frozen frame behind Claire was a mural.
The old Bellmont founder symbol.
It was not in the resort.
It was in the abandoned first hotel my mother bought thirty years ago.
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"We can be there in an hour."
He said, "If you go to Bellmont House, Vanessa dies."
