Chapter 3 - THE SECRET BEHIND MY MOTHER'S DEATHMy father's expression changed when Vanessa mentioned Richard Blackwood's records.
He turned toward her.
“What records?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I didn't say anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I was confused.”
Daniel stepped between them.
“Arthur, my father has been dead for four years. Whatever happened eighteen years ago has nothing to do with my marriage.”
My father looked at him.
“That may be true. But you've just assaulted my daughter, and your mistress appears to know something about an old investigation.”
The police officer interrupted.
“Mr. Whitmore, let's avoid questioning witnesses ourselves.”
My father nodded.
He had spent decades around lawyers, judges, and corporate investigations. He knew when to stop talking.
But I could see the fury behind his eyes.
A paramedic gently pressed gauze against my shoulder.
I winced.
“You should go to the hospital,” she said. “Some of these injuries need more attention, and we need to make sure there's no deeper damage.”
I looked at Daniel.
He was watching the police, not me.
As an officer asked him to explain the belt and the injuries, Daniel finally seemed to understand the severity of his situation.
He lowered his voice.
“Emily, I love you.”
I didn't answer.
He stepped toward me.
“I made a terrible mistake.”
I stared at the man standing beneath the chandelier.
The expensive shirt.
The polished shoes.
The wedding ring.
Everything about him looked familiar.
Except his face.
For years, I had mistaken his charm for kindness.
Now, stripped of everything else, I could see the cruelty underneath.
“You didn't make a mistake,” I said. “You made twenty decisions.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“Every time you raised that belt, you decided to hurt me again.”
The room went silent.
I lifted my left hand.
The diamond wedding ring caught the light.
Daniel's expression softened with sudden hope.
“Emily, please…”
I slipped the ring off.
For a moment, I remembered the day he put it on my finger.
We had married in a small church outside Boston.
He'd cried during his vows.
I had believed every word.
Now I placed the ring on the coffee table.
“I'm finished.”
Daniel stared at it.
Then his face twisted.
“You think you can just walk away?”
An officer stepped forward.
“Mr. Blackwood, that's enough.”
Daniel turned angrily.
“This is my home!”
I looked toward my father.
He understood immediately.
“Actually,” Arthur said, “we should discuss that later.”
Daniel frowned.
“What does that mean?”
My father didn't answer.
Instead, he helped me toward the door.
As we passed Vanessa, she looked up with frightened eyes.
“Emily…”
I stopped.
She swallowed.
“I didn't think he'd actually hurt you that badly.”
I stared at her.
“You told him twenty wasn't enough.”
Her face drained.
“I was angry.”
“And I was bleeding.”
She lowered her eyes.
I leaned closer.
“You didn't have to hold the belt to be part of what happened.”
Then I walked away.
The police continued handling the situation as the paramedics accompanied me downstairs.
Behind us, Daniel began shouting.
His words followed me into the elevator.
“Emily! You can't do this! I'll lose everything!”
I didn't turn around.
I already knew what it felt like to lose everything.
The difference was that I hadn't chosen it.
He had.
At the hospital, a doctor examined my injuries while my father waited outside.
My back was covered in painful welts and several broken areas of skin.
My shoulder was badly bruised.
Fortunately, the examination found no serious internal injury.
The physician carefully explained what the next days of recovery might involve.
Then she asked whether I wanted photographs taken for the medical record.
“Yes,” I whispered.
She looked at me gently.
“You're allowed to say no.”
“I know.”
I took a breath.
“But I want the truth documented.”
After the examination, a nurse gave me clean clothes.
My father had somehow managed to bring my favorite oversized blue sweater.
It was one I'd left at his house years earlier.
When I stepped into the private waiting area, he was sitting alone, holding a small photograph.
My mother.
I recognized it immediately.
She was standing in the garden of our old Connecticut estate, laughing as the wind blew her hair across her face.
I had been fourteen when she died.
Her name was Catherine Whitmore.
She was intelligent, generous, and stubborn enough to argue with my father during board meetings.
She started the Whitmore Medical Foundation to help families who couldn't afford specialized treatment.
The last thing she said to me before her death was something I'd never forgotten.
“Never make yourself smaller to keep someone else comfortable.”
For eighteen years, I'd tried to live by those words.
Except in my marriage.
“Daddy?”
He stood.
“Sweetheart.”
He wrapped me in the gentlest hug.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Finally, I sat beside him.
“Tell me about Mom.”
His face tightened.
“Emily…”
“Please. I need to know.”
He looked down at the photograph.
“Your mother was investigating missing money from the foundation before she died.”
I frowned.
“Missing money?”
“More than eighteen million dollars had been diverted through fraudulent invoices and accounts connected to outside contractors.”
My stomach tightened.
“Richard Blackwood?”
My father nodded.
“He was the financial adviser overseeing several of those contracts.”
I tried to remember Daniel's father.
Richard Blackwood had been a polished, silver-haired businessman with perfect manners.
He loved expensive watches and spoke constantly about family loyalty.
He died of pancreatic cancer four years earlier.
At his funeral, Daniel had cried for hours.
I had held his hand.
I had even paid for some of the medical expenses when Richard became ill.
The memory made me nauseated.
“Mom discovered the theft?”
“She suspected Richard and two other men. She was preparing to turn over documents to federal investigators.”
“What happened?”
My father looked at me.
“She received a phone call telling her that an accountant wanted to meet her in a secure location. She left the foundation offices during a storm.”
I remembered the rain.
“She never arrived.”
“No.”
Her car had gone off a narrow road near the Hudson River.
The police concluded she lost control on wet pavement.
There had been no evidence of another vehicle.
At least, none we'd known about.
“What changed?” I asked.
My father took a long breath.
“An investigator named Samuel Reeves contacted me last week. He had been working on an unrelated financial fraud case and discovered archived material connecting Richard to the foundation's stolen funds.”
“That's not proof he killed Mom.”
“No,” my father said. “It isn't.”
His honesty made me love him more.
He wasn't trying to comfort me with certainty.
He was telling me what he knew.
“But Reeves found an old witness statement that was never included in the original case file.”
“What did it say?”
“A driver reported seeing a dark SUV following your mother's car shortly before the crash.”
I felt cold.
“And?”
“The witness remembered part of the license plate. Reeves believes it may have belonged to a security company used by Richard.”
I covered my mouth.
For years, I had imagined my mother alone on that road.
Frightened.
Trying to get home.
Now I pictured another car behind her.
Someone watching.
Someone following.
“Why didn't the police investigate?”
“We don't know yet. Records were incomplete, and the witness's statement apparently went nowhere.”
My father leaned forward.
“Emily, there is another reason I think Daniel may know more than he's admitting.”
I waited.
“Two days before your wedding, Daniel came to see me privately.”
I looked up sharply.
“He did?”
My father nodded.
“He asked me to invest fifty million dollars in his company.”
“What?”
“He said he wanted to give you the life you deserved.”
I almost laughed.
Daniel always told me that my father had refused to help him because he didn't respect him.
“I declined his request,” Arthur continued, “but I allowed my investment office to evaluate the company later, through separate funds.”
“Why?”
“Because you loved him.”
His eyes filled.
“And I was afraid that if I refused, you'd believe I was trying to destroy your happiness.”
Tears ran down my face.
“Daddy, I treated you terribly.”
“You were in love.”
“I stopped calling.”
“I kept hoping you'd come back.”
I squeezed his hand.
Then he said something that changed everything.
“During that meeting, Daniel mentioned your mother's foundation.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“He said Richard had always admired Catherine's work.”
“That sounds harmless.”
“It did at the time.”
My father reached inside his coat.
He removed a small envelope.
“Reeves found this among Richard's archived business documents.”
He handed it to me.
Inside was a photograph.
I recognized my mother immediately.
She was standing beside Richard Blackwood outside a brick office building.
On the back, someone had written a date.
Two weeks before her death.
Beneath it were five words.
Catherine knows. We must act.
My hands began to shake.
“Who wrote this?”
“We don't know.”
I stared at the photograph.
Then I noticed something else.
In the background stood a young man.
He wore a dark jacket and was leaning against a parked car.
The image was slightly blurred, but his face was visible.
I moved the photograph closer to the light.
My breath caught.
“Daddy…”
Arthur looked at me.
“What is it?”
I pointed to the young man.
“I've seen him before.”
“Where?”
I could barely speak.
“He was at our wedding.”
My father leaned closer.
The man in the photograph was seventeen or eighteen at most.
But I recognized the shape of his eyes.
The scar near his eyebrow.
The crooked smile.
His name was Marcus Vale.
Daniel had introduced him as an old family friend.
Marcus was now Blackwood Development's chief financial officer.
And three days before Daniel beat me, I had overheard Marcus arguing with Vanessa in our kitchen.
He had said one sentence that made no sense at the time.
“If Emily ever finds out what happened to Catherine, every one of us is finished.”
I gripped my father's arm.
“Daddy, Marcus knows.”
He stared at me.
Then his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
“It's Samuel Reeves.”
He answered immediately.
“Reeves, I'm with Emily.”
I watched his expression harden.
“What?”
A pause.
“When?”
Another pause.
Then my father looked at me with a horror I'd never seen before.
He ended the call.
“Emily, Marcus Vale was found dead an hour ago.”
I couldn't breathe.
And then my phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number appeared.
YOUR MOTHER ASKED TOO MANY QUESTIONS.
May you like
A second message followed.
DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.
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