The revelation about Ms. Evelyn Jenkins being the legal representative for Sacred Trust Holdings sent a jolt through me. It wasn’t just a professional coincidence; it felt like a hidden hand had been guiding events for years. I immediately called Marty, my voice tight with urgency.
“Marty, I found something,” I said, barely containing my excitement. “The offshore company, Sacred Trust Holdings? Its legal representative is Ms. Evelyn Jenkins.”
A beat of stunned silence followed on the other end of the line.
“Jenkins?” Marty finally whispered, her voice laced with disbelief. “Our Jenkins?”
“The same one,” I confirmed. “The notary who handled Mom’s will. The same one who told me the coastal property was ‘dissolved’.”
Marty let out a short, incredulous laugh. “That’s… that’s unbelievable. She always seemed so proper.”
“She’s anything but proper, Marty,” I countered. “She’s directly involved in funneling money from Beatrice’s trust out of the Sanctuary.”
I could hear Marty breathing heavily, processing the information. The shock was clear in her voice. “But… why would she?”
“That’s what I need to know,” I said. “Is there any connection between her and Beatrice? Anything at all?”
Marty was quiet for a long moment, a silence that stretched my nerves taut. Then, a small sound escaped her lips, a recognition, almost a gasp.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, her voice filled with dawning realization. “The family reunion.”
“What family reunion?” I urged her.
“Years ago,” Marty explained, her words coming faster now. “Long before the Sanctuary really took off. Silas and I were still young. Mother hosted a family reunion for some distant relatives, from a smaller town upstate.”
She paused, as if sifting through old memories. “Beatrice was there. She was much younger then, not the frail woman we know now. And… and Evelyn Jenkins was there too. Her mother was a distant cousin of ours, I think. Or maybe Beatrice’s.”
My breath hitched. “Are you serious? Evelyn Jenkins and Beatrice Thorne are related?”
“Distant cousins, yes,” Marty affirmed, her voice now firm with certainty. “I remember it clearly now. Evelyn’s mother, she kept making pointed comments about Beatrice being ‘the black sheep’ of the family, always chasing spiritual fads. And Beatrice, she kept her distance, very quiet.”
This was the twist, the hidden connection that explained everything. A long-standing familial tie between the supposed self-sacrificing victim and the corrupt enabler. It explained Ms. Jenkins’s willingness to participate in the fraud, her loyalty extending beyond mere financial incentives. This was a specific, petty cruelty: a family member actively working to defraud another, all while maintaining a facade of professional detachment.
“Beatrice always kept that hidden,” Marty mused, a bitter edge to her tone. “Never mentioned it once. Always presented herself as having no family left, completely devoted to God.”
“Of course she did,” I said, a cold anger building inside me. “It would ruin her image as the selfless, isolated servant of God if people knew she had family, especially one complicit in her schemes.”
I remembered Beatrice’s stories about her lonely life before the Sanctuary, her tales of finding solace only in the divine. She had cultivated that narrative carefully, endearing herself to the community, making them feel sorry for her, making her seem above worldly connections. It was all a lie.
“She always talked about how her ‘true family’ was the Sanctuary, the flock,” Marty said, a new understanding dawning in her voice. “And we all believed her. Silas especially.”
“She exploited that image, Marty,” I stated, the pieces clicking into place. “She used it to manipulate everyone, including Silas.”
The manipulation was deeper, more insidious, than I had initially grasped. Beatrice had meticulously crafted her persona, not just to appear pious, but to conceal her very real, very worldly connections and intentions. The cruelty was in the deliberate deception of kinship, painting herself as isolated to gain trust.
“And she got Jenkins to falsify my mother’s will, didn’t she?” I asked, the pain of the old wound resurfacing. “To make sure I was disinherited, so the coastal property could be funneled to her as well.”
Marty didn’t answer directly, but her silence was confirmation enough. Her eyes were wide, filled with a mixture of shock and dawning horror. She was seeing the full scope of Beatrice’s treachery, and how deeply it had impacted her own family.
“This is bigger than just the Sanctuary’s money, Marty,” I said. “This goes back years. To my mother, to her will.”
The thought of Beatrice, then a younger, quieter woman, subtly orchestrating events from the shadows, leveraging her distant cousin’s professional position, sent a chill down my spine. It implied a long-game strategy, a calculating mind at work for a very long time.
“So, Jenkins isn’t just a corrupt notary,” I concluded. “She’s a complicit relative. A loyal enabler in Beatrice’s scheme.”
Marty nodded slowly, still processing the magnitude of the revelation. Her loyalty to her brother was now truly pitted against the horrifying truth of Beatrice’s long-standing deception. The innocent-looking notary and the saintly elder, bound by blood and deceit. The web was tightening.
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