Chương 7
“He went out through the back entrance.”
Marcus frowned.
“When?”
“While everyone was watching the front.”
Ava almost laughed.
Of course.
Richard Whitmore had understood something everyone else had not.
Attention was not the same as control.
Sometimes the person being watched was not the person in danger.
“Did he take anything?”
Lena hesitated.
Ava noticed.
“What?”
“He asked his assistant for a briefcase.”
Marcus looked at her.
“Which briefcase?”
“The black one from his office.”
Ava and Marcus exchanged a glance.
The same office they had just left.
The same place where the documents had been hidden.
“You need to check what’s missing,” Ava said.
Lena shook her head.
“I already know.”
“What?”
“The original files.”
Marcus’s face tightened.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Ava looked at the folder in her hand.
The copies.
Only copies.
Someone had wanted them to find enough information to start asking questions.
But not enough to know everything.
That bothered her more than the missing documents.
A person trying to hide evidence would remove everything.
A person trying to control a story would leave exactly what they wanted discovered.
“What else was in the office?” Ava asked.
Lena looked at her.
“Why?”
“Because if your father wanted us to find this, he would have left something.”
Marcus shook his head.
“You think he wanted us to find it?”
“I think someone wanted us to find something.”
She looked at the folder.
“Those are different.”
Lena leaned against the wall.
“You sound like my father.”
Ava looked at her.
“That’s not a compliment.”
“No.”
Lena gave a tired smile.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
For a brief moment, the tension eased.
Not much.
Just enough for everyone to remember they were three exhausted people standing in a hallway after a ruined wedding.
Ava looked at Lena.
“I’m sorry.”
Lena blinked.
“For what?”
“Your wedding.”
Lena looked toward the empty ceremony space.
The flowers.
The chairs.
The decorations that had been arranged for a future that no longer existed.
“I don’t know if I’m sad about the wedding.”
Ava waited.
“I think I’m sad that I don’t know if I ever knew the person I was supposed to marry.”
The honesty of it stayed with Ava.
Because that was exactly what she felt about Marcus.
Not the same betrayal.
Not the same history.
But the same fracture.
The person you trusted becoming a question.
Marcus looked at Lena.
“I never wanted this to happen to you.”
Lena looked at him.
“I know.”
The words were gentle.
But they did not fix anything.
Ava noticed that too.
People often thought apologies repaired damage.
They did not.
Sometimes they only proved the damage existed.
A phone vibrated.
Marcus checked his screen.
His expression changed.
Ava noticed immediately.
“What?”
He handed her the phone.
A message had been sent from an unknown number.
There was an attachment.
A photograph.
Ava opened it.
The image showed her father.
Not old.
Not from the years before his company collapsed.
A recent photograph.
Taken months before he died.
He was sitting across from someone at a restaurant.
Ava looked closer.
Her breath caught.
The person across from him was Daniel Vale.
Marcus’s father.
The message beneath the image contained only one sentence.
Your father knew the truth before he lost everything.
Ava looked at Marcus.
He had gone pale.
“You didn’t know about this.”
It was not a question.
“No.”
For once, she believed him.
That scared her.
Because if Marcus had not sent the message, and Richard Whitmore had not sent it, then someone else was watching.
Someone else had been waiting.
Ava enlarged the image.
The date appeared in the corner.
Six months before her father died.
She looked at Marcus.
“Your father was alive then.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever mention meeting my father?”
Marcus’s face tightened.
“No.”
Ava stared at the picture.
Two men sitting together.
Two families connected by something hidden.
Two people who had taken secrets to their graves.
Then she noticed something on the table between them.
A small envelope.
White.
Unmarked.
The same kind of envelope she had received three days earlier.
Ava felt the room become quiet.
“Marcus.”
He looked at her.
“That envelope.”
His eyes moved to the photograph.
Neither of them spoke.
Because they both understood the same thing at the same time.
The message that brought Ava to the wedding was not the beginning.
It was someone continuing a conversation that had started eight years ago.
The envelope in the photograph looked ordinary.
That was what bothered Ava most.
After everything that had happened, after the ruined ceremony and the reporters and the hidden documents, she expected the evidence of something terrible to look different.
She expected something obvious.
Instead, it was a plain white envelope sitting between two men who had spent years keeping secrets from the people closest to them.
Marcus took the phone from her hand.
“I need to call someone.”
“Who?”
He looked at the screen.
“My father’s attorney.”
Ava watched him.
“Your father’s attorney is still working?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marcus hesitated.
Because there were too many answers.
Because his father had been dead for two years, and yet somehow every part of tonight kept leading back to him.
Ava crossed her arms.
“Marcus.”
“I don’t know.”
The honesty stopped her.
Not completely.
But enough.
She had spent the last several hours discovering that people she trusted had hidden things from her.
She was tired of pretending every answer had to come immediately.
Lena looked at the photograph again.
“My father knew about this.”
Ava turned.
“How do you know?”
“Because he knew everything about everyone.”
The bitterness in Lena’s voice was quiet.
Not dramatic.
Just worn down.
“He kept files on employees, business partners, friends.”
Marcus looked at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because you were already looking at him like he was the enemy.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t know if I was ready to admit you might be right.”
May you like
Nobody spoke.
Ava understood that.
