I caught my husband kissing my older sister in my mother’s kitchen while twenty people celebrated my father’s sixty-fifth birthday in the next room. / Chapter 15 / 120

Chapter 15 - The Sister’s Confession

At seven o'clock the following morning, my phone rang again. It was Julianna.

This time, she wasn't calling to threaten me. When I picked up the receiver, all I could hear on the line was jagged, breathless sobbing.

"Clara... please don't hang up," Julianna wept, her voice completely stripped of her usual haughty arrogance. "Please. I don't know who else to call. Mother locked me out of the condo. She took my car keys, my cards... she told me that if Richard goes to prison, she’s going to tell the police that I was the one who stole Dad’s financial ledgers three years ago."

I sat at the kitchen table, the morning sun breaking weakly through the receding coastal fog. Liam set a warm mug of tea in front of me, sitting opposite me with an attentive, silent gaze.

"Why are you calling me, Julianna?" I asked coldly. "You made your choice. You stood in that kitchen with Richard’s hands on your waist, laughing while I poured wine for Dad. You spent two years trying to convince the family that I was crazy."

"Because she’s going to kill herself, or she’s going to kill Dad’s legacy, Clara!" Julianna cried out, the desperation tearing at her vocal cords. "Richard went completely off the rails after he saw you last night. He called Mother screaming, saying they were going to get caught. Mother told him that if they burn, they take everyone with them. She hired a private investigator to dig into Liam’s past!"

My eyes snapped up to Liam. Liam noticed the sudden change in my posture and tilted his head inquiringly.

"What is she looking for, Julianna?"

"Liam’s first marriage," Julianna blurted out, her words tumbling over one another in a frantic rush. "The accident in Maine five years ago. Mother found the insurance settlement papers. She’s meeting with a freelance tabloid reporter in Portland today at noon. She wants to publish an exposé claiming Liam was responsible for his late wife’s death and that he’s preying on you for your divorce settlement!"

The tea went cold in my throat.

Liam had lost his first wife, Sarah, in a devastating black-ice car crash on a mountain road five winters ago. The grief had nearly consumed him before he relocated to this coast to rebuild his life piece by piece. There had been an inquiry—routine, thorough, and entirely exonerating—which proved that a mechanical steering failure had caused the spin. But Eleanor didn't care about the truth; she only cared about weaponizing grief to destroy Liam’s reputation and isolate me once again.

"Where is she meeting the reporter?" I asked, my voice deadly level.

"The Harbor View Bistro in Portland," Julianna sobbed. "At twelve-thirty. Clara, please... if you help me get my car back from her, I will give you everything. I have the emails between Richard and Mother. I have the draft agreements where they planned the fraud. I have the recordings."

"Bring them to my lawyer's office in thirty minutes," I said coldly. "And Julianna? If this is another setup, I swear on Dad's life, I will let the state attorney file every single felony against you without a plea deal."