Chapter 6 - AMELIA MORGAN
Daniel had been five when Amelia died.
Vanessa was twelve.
The official family story said Amelia suffered an undiagnosed heart defect while attending summer camp.
The death was real.
No violence surrounded it.
But after Amelia died, Evelyn stopped using family children in Morgan House advertising for nearly a decade.
Daniel remembered arguments between Evelyn and Robert.
“You made those girls compete,” Evelyn once shouted.
Robert replied:
“They liked the campaigns.”
Vanessa later became obsessed with restoring the family-child brand.
She put Chloe into Morgan House photographs before Chloe could walk.
Robert encouraged it.
Daniel did not.
He also did not stop it.
When Lily was born, Evelyn had already died.
Vanessa began comparing the girls immediately.
Chloe had Vanessa’s blond curls.
Lily had thick chestnut hair with copper highlights inherited from Daniel’s side.
Morgan House’s oldest logo featured a little girl with long dark hair tied by an embroidered ribbon.
Family lore said the image represented Evelyn as a child.
I had always considered the resemblance to Lily sentimental nonsense.
Vanessa treated it as competition.
Dana Reeves, the photographer, told investigators that the heritage review specifically referenced the original Morgan Girl trademark.
The trustee apparently needed to determine how the historic child-image rights should be administered.
That sounded bizarre.
A trademark was corporate property.
A child was not.
Naomi explained that estate trusts could tie voting rights or licensing decisions to descendants, but exact terms mattered.
“We need the document before drawing conclusions.”
The police recovered deleted messages from Vanessa’s phone.
Most were ordinary complaints.
Rachel thinks Lily is special.
Chloe deserves her own campaign.
Dad promised.
One message to Robert read:
If the review compares them in natural form, we lose.
Robert replied:
Then make sure the comparison never happens.
No mention of scissors.
No explicit order to harm Lily.
But Robert knew something had to be prevented.
He denied meaning physical appearance.
“We were discussing campaign eligibility.”
“What eligibility?” investigators asked.
“Confidential trust matters.”
His attorney ended the interview.
Daniel confronted him privately despite Naomi advising against unsupervised discussions.
I was furious when he admitted it.
“You warned him what matters.”
“He’s my father.”
“He’s also under investigation.”
“I needed to hear him say it.”
“You’re not a detective.”
The same lesson I learned through my slap appeared in another form.
Emotion created action before strategy.
Daniel admitted the mistake.
Robert told him only:
“Your grandmother made a ridiculous trust because she felt guilty about Amelia.”
That was the first direct acknowledgment.
Daniel asked what guilt.
Robert refused.
The next morning, someone accessed Morgan Legacy’s server and attempted to delete archived footage from every Lily-related campaign.
The deletion failed because the outside investigators had already mirrored the system.
The login originated from Robert’s home network.
He claimed a staff member used it.
The staff member was on vacation.
The board suspended Robert from all media systems.
Not from the entire company yet.
Evidence needed more.
The mirror archive contained hundreds of hours of footage.
In one video recorded when Lily was three, Vanessa stood behind a camera and told an employee:
“Every time Rachel signs one of these, Chloe loses another percentage.”
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The word percentage moved the investigation from jealousy toward money.
But we still did not know what was being divided.
