Chapter 5 - The Secret I Buried Six Years Ago
At nine the next morning, Charles and I entered the Whitmore Foundation archive.
Lily stayed upstairs with Eleanor.
For once, I trusted Eleanor with her.
Daniel was not allowed near Lily without me.
He didn’t argue.
Box 617 contained recordings.
Not financial documents.
Not contracts.
Recordings.
One was dated six years earlier.
Charles inserted it into an old media player.
Richard Mercer appeared on-screen.
So did Vanessa.
They were arguing.
“You said she’d leave,” Vanessa snapped.
“She did.”
“But Charles will find her.”
“Not if Claire believes he hates her.”
Vanessa demanded more money.
Richard refused.
Then she said something neither Charles nor I expected.
“What happens when Daniel finds out?”
“He won’t.”
“And if he falls in love with her?”
Richard laughed.
“That would make everything easier.”
I shut off the recording.
I couldn’t watch more.
Charles looked devastated.
“I let that man sit at my table.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Neither did you.”
We sat in silence.
Then I told him the secret I had hidden.
The reason I never returned even after my anger cooled.
“I was pregnant.”
Charles looked at me.
“With Lily?”
“Yes.”
I had discovered the pregnancy shortly after marrying Daniel.
I considered contacting my father.
Then Richard found me first.
He told me Charles had learned about the pregnancy and considered my child a threat to the Whitmore legacy.
It sounded like something an angry billionaire might say.
Especially the father I remembered then.
Richard showed me another forged document.
I believed him.
“I thought staying away protected Lily.”
Charles cried.
Not dramatically.
He simply lowered his head and wept for five years he could never recover.
I moved beside him.
For the first time since my mother died, I put my arms around my father.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
We stayed that way until my phone rang.
The hospital.
Lily’s pediatrician had reviewed photographs of the wrist injury and wanted her examined.
We went immediately.
The injury was minor.
The emotional damage concerned me more.
A child specialist spoke with Lily privately.
When she came out, she asked me something.
“Mommy, is Daddy mad at me?”
“No.”
“Because I told Grandpa?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Is Vanessa coming back?”
I knelt.
“No one gets to hurt you and then demand that you protect them.”
She thought about that.
Then nodded.
Outside the room, Daniel was waiting.
I hadn’t invited him.
“I wanted to see her.”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
Pain crossed his face.
“I’m her father.”
“Then start behaving like one.”
He didn’t fight me.
Instead, he handed me his phone.
“I found something.”
A message from Vanessa.
If Claire finds the original agreement, we’re both finished.
I stared at him.
“What agreement?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
For once, I did.
Daniel had done enough terrible things without needing to invent new ones.
“Where is Vanessa?”
“Gone.”
Security had released her after police took a statement because the wrist injury did not justify detention.
Now nobody could find her.
Charles called.
His investigators had located an account Richard used years earlier.
Payments went to Vanessa.
But one payment had continued after Richard died.
Someone else had been paying her.
The most recent transfer was yesterday.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
I looked at Daniel.
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
Then another message arrived.
This one was for me.
A photograph of Lily sleeping.
Taken that morning.
Inside Charles’s house.
Underneath were five words.
STOP DIGGING OR LOSE HER AGAIN.
I looked toward the pediatric room.
The door was open.
May you like
The bed was empty.
And Lily was gone.
