Chapter 7 - Simon Vale
Simon looked older than I remembered.
Not weak.
Reduced.
As if six years of sleeping beside a secret system had taken weight from his body.
We met inside a federal interview room.
Naomi beside me.
Adrian behind glass.
Simon’s attorney present.
No private family mythology.
“Why keep Avalon alive?”
I asked.
“Because your father asked me to.”
“Board records say shut down.”
“He wanted public shutdown.”
“Why?”
“Because Richard discovered too much.”
“Then why keep Richard around?”
Simon looked down.
“Charles thought he could control him.”
My father’s favorite mistake.
“He respected Richard’s intelligence.”
“And underestimated his patience.”
“Yes.”
“Who brought Richard into Avalon succession planning?”
Simon hesitated.
“Your mother.”
I went still.
“My mother died when I was nineteen.”
“I know.”
“What are you talking about?”
My mother, Eleanor Hayes, had been ill for years before her death.
Autoimmune disease.
She did not work at Hayes Advanced Systems.
At least not officially.
Simon explained.
Eleanor managed family trust architecture privately.
She distrusted the board.
She believed corporate founders often lose control through succession weakness.
Years before Avalon existed, she created legal structures around my father’s future research.
When Avalon became valuable, Charles adapted those structures.
Richard later discovered them through Northstar diligence.
But the vulnerability existed because of Eleanor’s framework.
That did not make her conspirator.
It made her original architect of a structure later exploited.
Simon continued.
“Your mother created a spousal continuity seat.”
Richard’s seat.
Not specifically Richard.
Any spouse I had when succession triggered.
The idea was to prevent professional trustees from freezing out the surviving family.
My mother died believing future Amelia deserved a spouse beside her.
She had no idea who that spouse would be.
Richard turned a protective clause into an access path.
Again, something built from love became useful to control.
“Why did Dad not remove it?”
“He tried.”
“When?”
“After Northstar.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Simon looked toward his attorney.
“Because changing the continuity trust required your signature once you turned twenty five.”
“I would have signed.”
“He did not tell you.”
Of course.
Why?
“He did not want you to know Richard had investigated Avalon before your engagement.”
My father chose secrecy to protect my relationship.
That secrecy protected Richard instead.
My hands shook.
“Everybody decided what I could handle.”
Simon said nothing.
“Evelyn?”
“She begged Charles to tell you.”
“He refused?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she not?”
“She believed your father had the right to manage his daughter.”
I laughed bitterly.
“So the genius security system failed because nobody could say one uncomfortable sentence.”
Simon almost smiled.
“Many systems fail that way.”
What did Richard want from Avalon?
Not simply patents.
Avalon had a hidden capability.
Transaction provenance.
Every sensitive action inside connected Hayes systems could be traced through immutable authorization history.
Not blockchain marketing nonsense.
A tamper resistant internal ledger.
For seven years, Avalon had quietly recorded certain high value corporate approvals.
If someone forged board documents, transferred research, altered trust authorizations, or accessed sealed patents through integrated systems, traces could survive even when ordinary logs disappeared.
Richard wanted root access because Avalon contained evidence.
Of what?
His own conduct.
Simon said:
“Northstar extracted prototype code before the failed acquisition.”
“How much?”
“Enough to build a competing derivative.”
“Did Richard sell it?”
“No.”
“He used it.”
“For what?”
“A company called Meridian Defense Logic.”
I knew the company.
It had become a major federal contractor.
Valuation over nine billion dollars.
Founder listed:
Nathan Cole.
No relation to Adrian.
Richard had invested early.
Quietly.
Through trusts.
If Meridian’s core architecture derived illegally from Avalon code, Richard’s stake could be worth billions and expose him to massive claims.
That was the real fortune.
Not mine.
His.
Richard needed Avalon root access to erase or alter provenance records tying Meridian technology to stolen Hayes code.
Could he erase them?
Simon shook his head.
“Not with one key.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
Alpha, Beta, Gamma.
Alpha deceased.
How could three key system work after my father died?
Alpha converted into legacy escrow.
Beta plus Gamma could authorize certain actions if continuity trustee approval existed.
Richard had Beta physical card.
He needed Gamma.
Me.
That was why he tried to take me to Avalon.
Then Beta aborted succession.
Evelyn, or her automated system, blocked him.
Richard chose murder because bringing me alive no longer helped.
That fit.
“What did the keycard in his pocket actually allow?”
“Only Beta identity initiation.”
“Could Richard use it without Evelyn?”
“No.”
“Then why carry it?”
“He believed Laura’s transfer documents reassigned Beta biometrics to continuity trustee protocol.”
“Did they?”
“No.”
Forged papers again.
Richard was operating partly on false information.
Who gave him those transfer documents?
Laura said Richard brought them.
Richard said Simon.
Simon denied.
Metadata traced document creation to a Hayes family office terminal.
User:
Amelia Hayes.
My credentials.
Again.
Someone inside my own administrative environment was feeding Richard forged authority using my identity.
Simon leaned forward.
“That is why I came back.”
“Who is it?”
“I do not know.”
“Then what do you know?”
He placed one printout on the table.
Four months of access logs.
Every forged estate amendment.
Beta transfer.
Gamma succession.
All had been prepared from the same workstation.
My executive assistant’s office.
Maya Bennett.
May you like
The woman who had worked beside me for eleven years.
Continue to the next part: Every forged document Richard relied on originated from the office of the person Amelia trusted with her daily life.
