Twenty five years earlier
April 1993
Lillian Clarke signs the final document to officially take over her father’s advertising business. At the age of twenty five, she had achieved more than most. She didn’t particularly enjoy talking about her achievements but many considered that she had it all. A straight A student at college, Lillian went on to complete an apprenticeship from a highly prestigious international marketing company. She met her husband, William Pierce, at twenty and they were engaged, with their wedding date set for three weeks’ time. Her stomach was beginning to bloom with pregnancy and she needs to finalise this transfer immediately. Feeling as though her soul had been signed over along with everything else, Lillian sighs with relief as her lawyer, James, began filing the papers into a folder.
‘There is one more thing that you need to sign.’
The line was barely audible above James’ shuffling. After questioning what had just been said and James denying speaking, Lillian decided she was just too expectant for there to be more paperwork.
‘Ask him for page sixty two.’
The disembodied voice sounds so compelling, and the name of the clause piques her interest. Lillian complies, causing James to let out an involuntary sigh as the prospect of leaving work on time evaporates. He hands Lillian page sixty two, one of the few pages to not have a signature emblazoned on the dotted line. The clause read: if the CEO is missing or otherwise presumed dead, the company is to be signed over to their child immediately. The child must be twenty five years of age. If there is no of age child, then the company must be passed to the CEO’s sibling. It will not be passed to a spouse.
Lillian picks up her pen swirls an elaborate signature at the bottom of the document. James hurriedly files it along with the rest of the papers and says his goodbyes. She wants to question him on the legality of the clause, or at least ask for an explanation of it, but he leaves before she can interrogate him. Lillian packs her things into a bag and leaves the office without another thought.
Part 1
Present day – 2018
Our present day story begins with a wedding in the middle of London. A seemingly happy couple stand at the altar, exchanging seemingly heartfelt vows. A twenty year old woman stands next to the man, smiling through his promise to love and cherish his new wife. When he finishes, her face snaps to an expression of distaste – even disgust – as the woman opposite the man begins to speak. The young woman is Amelia Pierce, someone who we may consider to be the protagonist of this story. The man is her father, William Pierce. The woman opposite her father is her new stepmother. But in some twisted coincidence between Amelia’s life and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, her new stepmother is also her aunt. Amelia had always had a good relationship with her aunt up until six months ago…
Six months earlier
Amelia stumbles around her dimly lit room. Her phone in hand, she listens to her father reel off everything that happened in the past twenty four hours. Amelia’s mother had attended a business trip in France. She took the ferry there on the 24th and was meant to be back home within six days. Her ticket number for the return ferry had been scanned and logged, along with a picture of her identification. However, Lillian didn’t arrive back in London. There was no activity on her bank cards or contact to her business associates. Strangest of all however, Lillian hadn’t spoken to Amelia. Since she was small, Lillian always made time during her busy schedule to speak to her daughter, especially when Amelia started university. The lack of communication from her mother had worried Amelia and she informed her dad, who seemed to brush it off without much response. But when her phone rang at four in the morning, a heavy sense of dread settled in the bottom of Amelia’s stomach.
It was now the 31st. There had been no contact from Lillian in two days and William was sick with worry. He called Amelia, explaining what had happened since he called the police. With a heavy heart, he dialled the number for Lillian’s younger sister, Adriana. After listening to everything, Adriana offered to stop by the Pierces’ to help out in any way she could. William agreed, and within the hour, Adriana was bundling her brother-in-law into a massive hug. Meanwhile, Amelia packed a bag with the bare essentials for the trip home, all the while hoping her mother would reach out.
Present Day
Thinking back to that day brought a wave of nausea to Amelia. From that moment, she saw her father and aunt get progressively closer. It continued in a similar manner and she would catch them together when her father was supposed to be at a work meeting. Amelia struggled not to hate her aunt for getting close with her father. She thought her father to be vulnerable and actively searching for support, while Adriana was a traitor to her mother. Amelia struggled to remove the look of disgust from her face once her aunt finished her vow. Once the ceremony ended, Amelia left the small hall and shut herself away from the almost Shakespearean scene that lay before her. She wished for a simpler time, when her mother was able to reassure her that everything would be fine. While Amelia daydreamed of happier times between her mother, father, and herself, a gentle knock at the door brought her back to reality.
‘Amelia sweetheart? Are you okay?’
Adriana’s voice pierced the happy thought bubble Amelia placed herself in. Amelia snapped that she was okay in response. The simple idea of her aunt trying to take her mother’s place caused her to tremble with intense anger. Amelia sighed, and -albeit unwillingly- left the room she had hidden herself away in. She plastered a smile on her face and began to mingle and socialise with the wedding guests.
Part 2
Four months earlier
Adriana
It was a few days after her sister’s disappearance that Adriana started to become suspicious of William. He hadn’t particularly shown a lot of emotion about the fact that his wife of twenty five years had been missing for four days. She decided to go into her sister’s office, just to see if there was any clue as to where she may have gone after France. As the lift arrived at the top floor of Lillian’s office, she caught her brother in law and someone she assumed to be a lawyer, rifling through various contracts and administration papers in the filing cabinets. William muttered something about needing to find a piece of the contract before Lillian’s lawyers did. She hung back outside of Lillian’s office, waiting for them to leave before she did her own investigating. Both William and the lawyer failed to notice Adriana standing outside when they left the offices. As they walked back towards the lift, Adriana caught William saying something that committed her to a plan already formulating in her mind.
‘Without finding that piece of contract, I won’t get the company. It’ll go to Amelia or Lillian’s sister. I’ll have to find some way to get them both out of the picture long enough for me to get everything. I’ll have to get it by any means necessary, even if it means a few people following the same fate as my darling wife.’
Adriana’s hand flew to her mouth. She repeated what William had just said over and over in her brain but there was no way to make it seem any less sinister. After helping her sister for years in the company, she knew the exact piece of contract he was looking for. Page sixty two was deliberately kept apart from the rest of the original contract, in case of situations exactly like these. Adriana knew the page off by heart, and she very well knew the company would go to herself, as Amelia was nowhere near of age. The plan forming in her mind was risky, and put her relationship with Amelia at a high chance of being ruined. But she needed to do whatever she could to protect both herself and her niece. Thus began the plan of seducing her brother in law into a relationship. By marrying him, Adriana hoped to pacify his desire for wealth. Adriana had inherited the company by this time, and it was therefore rather easy to become close with her scheming brother in law. They dated for a short while, and before long, the wedding in which we began our story, took place.
William
William needed the money. That’s how he justified making Lillian disappear. No agreements were made with paper or over the phone. Everything was verbal. “Best not to leave a paper trail” he thought. However, there was still the small matter of his daughter and sister in law. He went in search of the original contract that would give him all of the information he needed, but he was unable to find that one page that could explain everything. William had a vague understanding of what was written on that page, but if he actually found the page it would’ve revealed that Amelia was not the one to inherit the company. Instead, he started thinking of ways that she could follow in the footsteps of her mother and disappear.
The day he rang Amelia to inform her that Lillian was missing was the perfect opportunity to have his daughter removed from the picture. He would be able to have the company as soon as the police finished the investigation. The flight she was booked onto from university to home had onboard a contract assassin. It was by pure luck that her taxi from campus to the airport was stuck in traffic for two hours, causing her to miss her flight. When Amelia called him from the airport to say she had missed her flight, he feigned anxiety for her to get home as soon as possible. Knowing there was no way to have his daughter to follow a similar path to her mother until she was home, William decided to come up with another way to become to sole inheritor of Clarke Advertising
William was surprised when Adriana began to spend increasing amounts of time with him. He was even more surprised to find out that the business had been passed onto Adriana, and this forced him to quickly re-evaluate the plan of having both Adriana and Amelia taken care of. He continued to spend time with Adriana until she was comfortable, and then he proposed. Despite her sister disappearing just months earlier, Adriana accepted the proposal, and a date for the wedding was set.
Present Day
Over those four months of spending time and dating William Pierce, Adriana began gathering evidence to build a case against him. She found bank transfers from his and Lillian’s joint account into offshore accounts that were based mostly in Barbados. She found phone records, scrap pieces of paper with random coordinates on, burner phones, all of the makings of a criminal. Adriana had gained the trust of her new husband, and she knew what she had to do. She dialled the number for the leading detective on her sister’s disappearance.
‘Hello? DC Jones? This is Adriana Clarke. I have some important information regarding my sister, Lillian Pierce’s disappearance. It concerns her ex-husband, and my now husband William Pierce.’
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