Chapter 4 - BEFORE CLAUDIASophie was two when her mother died.
Her name was Allison.
She died after an aneurysm no one knew she had ruptured while she was at work.
There was no warning.
No long illness.
No chance for a six-year-old story someday about saying goodbye.
At two, Sophie barely understood death.
At three, she asked when Mommy was coming back from heaven.
At four, she decided heaven probably had elevators.
At five, she stopped asking.
That frightened me more than the questions had.
I met Claudia when Sophie was four.
Not at a gala.
Not because I was wealthy.
At a school fundraiser where I had donated a software package through my company and then accidentally spilled coffee across an entire table of silent-auction forms.
Claudia laughed.
Then helped.
She was an event consultant.
Independent.
Successful enough to support herself.
Sharp.
Organized.
Good with names.
Good with Sophie at first.
She never tried to replace Allison.
That mattered to me.
The first time Sophie called her “Mommy Claudia,” Claudia cried.
I did too.
We married nineteen months later.
By then my company, Halcyon Medical Logistics, had grown substantially.
I owned a majority interest.
On paper, my equity made me worth several million dollars.
In practice, much of it was tied up in a private company.
We lived well.
Large house.
Travel.
Private school for Sophie.
But I did not keep stacks of cash in a vault.
Claudia knew this.
She had signed a prenuptial agreement.
She had her own retirement assets and consulting income.
This was not a story where a stepmother married me to kill a child for an inheritance.
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That explanation would have been easier.
The truth was more ordinary.
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