My Husband Struck Me at a Gala to Protect a Corporate Raider — He Didn't Know I Frozen-Locked $85 Million of My Own Trust Five Minutes Earlier
The frantic corporate maneuvers faded for a moment as I remembered Leo. Mark’s seven-year-old son, caught in the middle of all this, was probably terrified in some hotel room. I needed to check on him.
I found him in the hotel diner, sitting quietly at a corner booth, coloring in a superhero book. A bowl of untouched fries sat in front of him. A nanny, looking thoroughly overwhelmed, sat across from him, scrolling through her phone.
“Hey, Leo,” I said softly, sliding into the booth next to him.
His head snapped up, a flicker of relief in his eyes. “Aunt Evelyn!” He hugged me tight, smelling faintly of crayons and hotel shampoo. “Are you okay? Dad was really mad earlier.”
“I’m fine, sweetie,” I reassured him, ruffling his hair. “Just a grown-up disagreement.” I glanced at the nanny, who offered a weak smile before resuming her phone scrolling.
“It was so loud,” Leo said, his voice small. “And then Dad and Mr. Kincaid were arguing in the hall, too.”
I let him talk, listening for any snippets that might be useful. “What were they arguing about?”
“The red folder,” he said, pointing a crayon at his drawing. “Dad said he needed a new ‘notary stamp’ for it. He said the first one wasn’t good enough.”
My ears perked up. “A notary stamp? Where were they?”
“At that little copy place,” he explained, still focused on his coloring. “You know, near the gift shop? Dad wanted the lady to put a gold stamp on it, but she said she didn’t have that one. She said it was ‘old.'”
A gold stamp. An old one. This was specific.
“So what happened then?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual.
Leo shrugged, drawing a cape on his superhero. “Mr. Kincaid got really mad. He said it didn’t matter, that he had one. He went back to their room and came back with a little box. Then he stamped the folder himself!”
My breath caught in my throat. Julian Kincaid, stamping a legal document himself, after a notary had refused? And it was a gold stamp.
“He pressed it down really hard,” Leo continued, seemingly oblivious to the significance of his words. “Like this.” He took a small plastic toy from his pocket and pressed it firmly onto a corner of his superhero drawing, leaving a faint circular indentation.
A gold bank stamp. From a “little box.” Julian Kincaid, the corporate raider, not trusting a public notary, and performing the act himself. It smelled of fraud.
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