The Waitress They Fired for Stealing Just Walked Into the Boardroom With Their Stolen Billions—And Her Dead Mother’s Will

"Arrest them," Special Agent Torres commanded, stepping forward with handcuffs drawn.

"Wait!"

The shout came from Mark Kline.

The head of security was sweating profusely, his heavy leather jacket drenched under the armpits. He looked at the federal agents, then at Daniel, and finally at Nora. He knew how federal sentencing worked. Money laundering was ten years. Attempted murder and conspiracy to commit arson carried life without parole.

"Wait," Kline repeated, raising both hands. "I want a proffer. I want a deal. I talk, and I walk on the arson charges."

Celeste’s head snapped toward him, her eyes wide with terror. "Mark! Shut your mouth! Don't you dare say a word!"

"Shut up, Celeste!" Kline barked, his face red and veins bulging in his neck. "I’m not spending the rest of my life in a supermax so you and your brat can pretend to be royalty! You promised me two million dollars from the Ashford sale to keep my mouth shut! You haven't paid me a dime in three months!"

"Agent Torres," Raymond Vance interjected smoothly. "If Mr. Kline wishes to make a sworn statement regarding the events of August 14, 2014, my client is willing to petition the District Attorney's office to consider his cooperation."

Torres pulled an audio recorder from his pocket and clicked it on. "State your name and what you know, Mr. Kline."

Kline took a deep, ragged breath. He pointed a thick, trembling finger directly at Celeste Vale.

"It was her," Kline said, his voice echoing in the dead silence of the room. "She planned the fire at the Hamptons cottage. She paid me fifty thousand dollars in cash to bypass the security cameras on the perimeter and padlock the exterior French doors."

"Liar!" Celeste screamed, lunging at Kline with her fingernails bared. A federal agent caught her by the shoulders, twisting her arms behind her back with a sharp click of steel cuffs. "He's lying! Daniel, make him stop!"

"Keep talking, Kline," Daniel said, his voice devoid of any warmth, any mercy.

"She wanted Nora gone before Daniel could update his will," Kline confessed, his words tumbling out in a panicked rush. "Katherine had left everything to Nora, but if Nora died before turning eighteen, the estate passed entirely to Daniel. And Celeste knew she could control Daniel. She told me to make it look like an electrical failure. She brought the accelerant from Manhattan in her own trunk."

Nora stood perfectly still. Hearing the truth spoken aloud after ten years of darkness was like having an old, agonizing wound cauterized with white-hot iron.

"And when I survived?" Nora asked, her voice dangerously quiet. "When the gardener pulled me through the basement window before the roof collapsed?"

Kline looked down at the floor, unable to meet her gaze. "Celeste had an ambulance waiting down the road. Not a city ambulance. A private transport service from St. Jude’s. When they pulled you out, you were unconscious from smoke inhalation. Celeste told the firefighters the body inside was yours—she had already bribed the medical examiner with two hundred thousand dollars to sign off on the cremated remains of an unclaimed Jane Doe from the county morgue."

"You monster," Arthur Vance whispered, disgusted tears filling his eyes. "You absolute monsters."

"She made me drive the transport to the Adirondacks," Kline muttered. "She paid the director of St. Jude’s ten thousand a month to keep Nora drugged, isolated, and off the books. When the sanitarium burned down seven years ago, Celeste thought Nora died in that fire too. But Nora escaped. We couldn't find her. We spent three years hunting for her until she disappeared into the foster system under a false name."

Kline looked up, his face gray. "I kept the original security tapes. I kept the receipts. I kept the canceled checks from Celeste’s offshore accounts. They're in a safety deposit box at Chase on 42nd Street. Key 408. Everything is in there."

Celeste stopped struggling. Her ivory suit was rumpled, Katherine’s pearls hung crooked across her chest, and her face was frozen in a mask of absolute, ruined despair.

"You're a dead man, Kline," she whispered, her voice dead, lifeless, and venomous.