Chapter 6 - THE CROSS FAMILY SECRETThalia arrived an hour later.
When I showed her the photograph, she stopped breathing.
“My father.”
“You're sure?”
“Of course I'm sure.”
Her fingers touched the image on my phone.
“He died when I was twelve.”
I looked at my father.
“You knew him.”
Nathaniel nodded.
“Victor Cross worked for Vale Capital in the early years.”
“As what?”
“My chief financial officer.”
Thalia stared at him.
“My father worked for you?”
“For almost seven years.”
“He told us he worked in banking.”
“He did.”
“Why have I never heard your name connected to him?”
Nathaniel looked at both of us.
“Because when Victor left Vale Capital, he did so under circumstances neither of us wanted public.”
Rebecca closed the conference-room doors.
I was getting tired of secrets entering my life through closed doors.
“What circumstances?” I asked.
Nathaniel leaned back.
“Victor discovered my affair.”
I stared at him.
“The affair that ended your marriage?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He was Margaret's friend.”
My mother's friend.
Thalia slowly sat beside me.
Nathaniel continued.
“Victor believed your mother deserved to know. He told her.”
My chest tightened.
“So Thalia's father is the reason Mom found out?”
“Yes.”
“Did you fire him?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“He resigned.”
My father paused.
“And he took evidence of something else with him.”
Rebecca seemed to know part of this story.
“What evidence?”
Nathaniel answered reluctantly.
“Accounting misconduct involving another executive.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
He looked almost insulted.
Then his expression softened.
“My younger brother, David.”
I barely remembered Uncle David.
He died when I was ten.
“David was moving money through unauthorized investments. Victor discovered it. I confronted my brother and forced him out.”
“Was he prosecuted?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I covered it up.”
There it was.
The sort of sentence that could destroy a billionaire.
Thalia whispered, “My father knew?”
“Yes.”
“And he stayed quiet?”
“He agreed because all funds were restored and innocent employees would have been harmed by a collapse.”
My father looked ashamed.
“It was the wrong decision.”
I thought about Marcus.
About myself.
Everyone had a justification for silence.
Family.
Employees.
Marriage.
Reputation.
Perhaps secrets weren't built from evil.
Perhaps they were built from people telling themselves that tomorrow would be a better day to tell the truth.
“What happened to Victor?” I asked.
“He left Atlanta. Started consulting. We barely spoke again.”
“And my mother?”
“She remained friends with him.”
Thalia suddenly looked uncomfortable.
“My mother hated yours.”
I turned.
“What?”
“I don't know why. Whenever Margaret Harper's name came up, she became furious.”
My father closed his eyes briefly.
“That would be because your mother believed Victor loved Margaret.”
Thalia stared.
“Did he?”
“I don't know.”
I felt as though I had entered someone else's soap opera.
“What does any of this have to do with Kyle?”
Rebecca answered.
“Possibly nothing. Possibly everything.”
She enlarged the old photograph.
“Where did Kyle get this?”
No one knew.
Then Thalia looked at me.
“His private investigator.”
Of course.
She told us Kyle had hired a man named Nolan Price years earlier to investigate competitors.
“Nolan found things,” she said. “Divorces. Affairs. gambling debts. Anything Kyle could use in negotiations.”
Marcus had already shown us Kyle's methods.
“What else did Nolan investigate?”
Thalia hesitated.
“You.”
My stomach clenched.
“And your family.”
Nathaniel's face darkened.
Including history Vale wanted buried.
Kyle had likely discovered David's misconduct.
Maybe he believed he could blackmail my father.
That explained his confidence.
The threat.
Tell your father to release the credit lines.
Kyle wasn't simply fighting for his company.
He had leverage.
Or thought he did.
At 3:15 p.m., my father's phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Then hung up.
“Nolan Price has contacted my office.”
Everyone stared.
“He wants money.”
“For what?”
“A file.”
“What file?”
Nathaniel's jaw tightened.
“He claims it's the complete investigation Kyle commissioned on our family.”
Rebecca asked, “How much?”
“Five million.”
Thalia gave a humorless laugh.
“Kyle hired a blackmailer who decided to blackmail him.”
Apparently.
Rebecca immediately contacted law enforcement.
No one was paying Nolan.
But we could cooperate.
Over the next several hours, arrangements unfolded beyond anything I imagined when I woke that morning.
Federal agents were now involved because of suspected wire fraud and forged financial documents.
I wasn't told every detail.
That was fine.
I had finally learned that knowing everything was not the same as controlling everything.
At 6 p.m., I received a voicemail from Kyle.
This time his voice sounded tired.
“Evelyn, please.”
I listened alone.
“You know me. Whatever your father is telling you, you know me.”
I almost deleted it.
Then he continued.
“I made mistakes. Thalia was a mistake. Last night was a mistake.”
A mistake.
He always used nouns that erased decisions.
Affair.
Mistake.
Argument.
Incident.
Never choices.
“I know you're angry, but we can still work this out. You don't need your father. You never did.”
That part hurt.
Because it was true.
I had never needed Nathaniel's money.
What I had needed was a father.
Kyle knew exactly where that wound existed.
He continued.
“I loved you before I knew anything about Vale.”
That was a lie.
We had the background report.
“I love you now.”
Another lie.
Then:
“And if you keep pushing this, people you care about are going to get hurt.”
I saved the message.
Threats were useful evidence.
That night, I went to see Thalia.
She was staying at a secured apartment owned by one of my father's companies.
She opened the door in sweatpants.
No makeup.
No diamonds.
For once, she looked nothing like my rival.
Just a pregnant thirty-one-year-old woman who had made catastrophic decisions.
“I brought dinner.”
She stared at the bag.
“What is it?”
“Thai food.”
“I hate Thai food.”
“You're welcome.”
She almost laughed.
We sat at the kitchen island.
For ten minutes, we didn't discuss Kyle.
Then she said, “I knew you existed.”
“I assumed.”
“I knew he was married when it started.”
“I also assumed that.”
“I told myself your marriage was over.”
“It wasn't.”
“I know.”
I looked at her.
“Why him?”
She considered it.
“He made me feel chosen.”
That answer surprised me.
“He would leave meetings to answer my calls. He remembered things. My coffee. My favorite hotel. What I wore the first time we met.”
She laughed bitterly.
“I thought attention meant love.”
I understood that too well.
Kyle had done the same with me.
Studied me.
Remembered everything.
Maybe love wasn't the word.
Maybe acquisition was.
“When did he become different?”
“When I got pregnant.”
“How?”
“Controlling. He wanted access to my medical portal. He chose the obstetrician. He started talking about contracts.”
My attention sharpened.
“What contracts?”
“An agreement giving him control over decisions involving the baby if something happened to me.”
“Did you sign?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the lawyer who drafted it accidentally emailed me the prior version.”
“What prior version?”
She stood and retrieved her laptop.
The document loaded.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
The agreement wasn't originally written for Thalia.
The metadata showed it had been created fourteen months earlier.
For me.
Evelyn.
The provisions were horrifying.
If I became incapacitated while pregnant, Kyle would gain extraordinary temporary control over assets supposedly intended for our child.
Except I'd never been pregnant.
Why draft it?
Unless Kyle had expected me to become pregnant.
I thought back fourteen months.
Kyle suddenly wanting children.
Kyle tracking my cycle.
Kyle becoming angry when I said I wasn't ready.
My stomach turned.
Thalia whispered, “There's more.”
She opened an email attached to the file.
Kyle had written to an attorney:
If E won't cooperate voluntarily, we need alternatives. The Vale inheritance is wasted if she remains childless.
I stared at the screen.
Thalia looked sick.
“I didn't know any of this.”
Neither had I.
My husband hadn't merely married me because I was wealthy.
He had viewed my future child as a financial instrument.
Then my phone rang.
Rebecca.
“Evelyn, we found Nolan.”
“Did he have the file?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
She hesitated.
“The file contains recordings.”
“Of Kyle?”
“Yes.”
My heart pounded.
“What kind of recordings?”
A pause.
Then:
“One of them appears to capture Kyle discussing what he planned to do if you refused to sign the trust documents.”
I gripped the counter.
“What did he say?”
Rebecca's voice became very quiet.
“He said eventually, Evelyn would either sign voluntarily…”
She stopped.
May you like
“Or?”
“Or no one would believe her when she said she hadn't.”
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