Three People in a Maintenance Launch
Chapter 06 - Three People in a Maintenance Launch
The launch struck the water hard enough to throw Mira against Adrian.
Elena started the motor while yacht lights swept the waves behind them.
Voss ordered the Aurelia’s crew to retrieve the boat.
No one launched pursuit.
Later, investigators would learn that two deckhands disabled the davit controls and blamed a hydraulic fault.
The workers had seen Beatrice strike Mira.
They had also seen Adrian leave with the waitress instead of the guests who could protect his reputation.
The maintenance launch reached a public harbor twenty minutes before the Aurelia docked at the private shipyard.
Reporters were already waiting.
The slap video had spread across the country. One frame showed the open watch on the deck. Amateur historians identified the crest as belonging to Gabriel Vale.
Mira stepped onto the pier wearing Adrian’s coat over her torn uniform.
Questions struck from every direction.
“Are you Gabriel Vale’s daughter?”
“Did you steal the watch?”
“Is Adrian helping you seize the company?”
“What happened aboard the yacht?”
Mira looked toward the cameras.
“Beatrice Vale hit me because a tray fell. She tried to take a watch my mother protected for twenty-two years. Everything else will be proven with documents.”
She refused to let the inheritance erase the assault.
Adrian announced that Captain Voss had diverted the yacht and confined them without consent. He suspended Voss pending investigation.
Beatrice appeared on television an hour later.
She called the event a calculated fraud organized by a disgruntled employee and an emotionally compromised nephew. She claimed Mira seduced Adrian into betraying the family.
The accusation was ridiculous and useful.
It redirected attention from uncle and niece toward scandal.
Adrian released the marriage certificate and clarified publicly that Mira was likely his brother’s daughter.
Commentators changed language immediately.
The waitress became the hidden heiress.
Mira hated it.
No one asked whether her cheek still hurt or whether yacht workers feared Beatrice.
They asked how many billions she might inherit.
Federal prosecutor Naomi Cross obtained the original documents and placed Mira under independent protection. A court ordered DNA testing using Gabriel’s preserved medical sample.
Beatrice’s attorneys demanded their own observers.
Mira agreed.
At midnight, Elena visited her hotel room.
“Voss knows we have the film.”
“Can it prove the fire?”
“If the heat did not destroy it.”
A specialist developed the first frames.
The engine-room film showed maintenance workers replacing a fuel valve hours before the explosion.
One man was Marcus Voss.
Behind him stood Beatrice.
The timestamp read 9:18 p.m.
The second film contained something stranger.
At 11:42, five minutes before the official explosion time, Gabriel was alive on Deck 4.
He was arguing with Adrian’s father, Charles Vale.
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Charles had supposedly been in London that night.
The family lie was larger than Beatrice.
