Chapter 6 - The Woman Thomas Never Told Me AboutBenjamin refused to explain in the parking lot.
“There are reporters everywhere.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“Martin said Thomas used me.”
“Martin says many things.”
“He told me to ask you something. I’m asking.”
Benjamin looked exhausted.
“I promised Thomas you would hear the truth from him.”
“He’s dead.”
“Not exactly.”
I stared at him.
Benjamin immediately shook his head.
“That came out wrong.”
I nearly screamed.
He opened his briefcase.
“Thomas left another video.”
Of course he did.
The man had apparently planned his death like other people planned weddings.
Benjamin drove me to his office.
We entered through a private parking garage to avoid reporters.
His assistant brought coffee.
I did not touch mine.
Benjamin opened a secure file.
Thomas appeared on the screen.
He looked healthier than during our marriage.
The date indicated it had been recorded six weeks before he proposed.
“Nancy,” he began, “there is one story I never told you.”
I held my breath.
“After you left town, I was angry.”
He smiled faintly.
“Mostly because I was seventeen and stupid.”
I almost smiled too.
“I threw myself into work. I helped my father. I told everyone I didn’t care that you had gone.”
His face changed.
“But I cared.”
Thomas described writing letters to me.
Dozens.
He never mailed them.
Then, three years after I left, he met a woman named Margaret Shaw.
“She was kind,” Thomas said. “Too kind for the man I was then.”
My heart tightened.
Margaret worked at his father’s office.
They dated nearly two years.
Thomas proposed.
I sat very still.
I had never known.
“Three weeks before our wedding,” Thomas continued, “Margaret told me she was pregnant.”
I stopped breathing.
“She was terrified because she had slept with someone else during a separation we had the previous summer.”
Thomas’s eyes lowered.
“The child might have been mine.”
Might.
I pressed my fingers to my lips.
“Margaret wanted me to marry her anyway. I said yes.”
I stared at the screen.
“She died before we could.”
My chest ached.
A car accident.
Margaret was six months pregnant.
The baby died too.
For years afterward, Thomas carried the guilt.
He believed if he had treated Margaret better, she would not have been driving home after an argument that night.
“So when people tell you I never married because I spent fifty-six years pining dramatically for you,” he said with a faint smile, “don’t believe them. Life is more complicated than that.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
“I loved Margaret.”
He paused.
“And I loved you.”
Those words did not hurt the way I expected.
They made Thomas more human.
Not a fairy-tale boy frozen at seventeen.
A man who had lived.
Lost.
Failed.
Survived.
Then he said something that confused me.
“But Margaret is not the secret Martin is talking about.”
I sat forward.
“There was a child.”
My pulse thundered.
“Not Margaret’s.”
Thomas took a breath.
“Robert’s.”
His younger brother.
“Robert had a daughter before Martin was born.”
I looked at Benjamin.
He said nothing.
Thomas continued.
“Her name is Rebecca.”
Rebecca Holloway.
Martin had a sister.
Half-sister.
“Robert was nineteen when Rebecca was born. Her mother, Susan Bell, was eighteen. My father thought the pregnancy would embarrass the family. He paid Susan to leave town.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
“I learned about it years later.”
By then, Susan had raised Rebecca alone.
Thomas found them.
He offered financial help.
Susan refused anything that looked like charity but allowed him to establish an education account.
Thomas quietly stayed in Rebecca’s life.
“She knew me as Uncle Thomas.”
My mind raced.
“Martin knows Rebecca exists. He also knows something he has spent years hiding.”
Thomas leaned toward the camera.
“Rebecca is Robert’s oldest child.”
My eyes widened.
The original Holloway family trust.
Bloodline succession.
If Thomas died unmarried, control would pass not simply to Martin.
It would pass according to seniority.
Rebecca would come before him.
“So why did Martin think he would inherit?” I whispered.
Benjamin answered.
“Because Rebecca signed a waiver twelve years ago.”
“Why?”
“She thought it related only to company employment rights.”
“It didn’t?”
“No.”
I looked back at Thomas.
“Martin lied to her,” the video continued.
“He told Rebecca the document protected her from Robert’s debts. In reality, she signed away any succession claim.”
My stomach turned.
“But Thomas had the waiver invalidated?” I guessed.
“No,” Benjamin said.
“Then why does this matter?”
Thomas answered as if he could hear me.
“Because Rebecca has a daughter.”
The video changed to a photograph.
A young woman stood beside an older woman.
The younger woman looked about thirty-five.
Dark hair.
Hazel eyes.
She was holding a little boy.
“My grand-niece, Emily Bell.”
I stared.
“Emily never signed anything.”
Thomas smiled.
“If you refuse the inheritance, Nancy, or if Martin somehow invalidates our marriage, Emily becomes the next uncontested bloodline beneficiary after Rebecca challenges her fraudulent waiver.”
I understood then.
Thomas had not trapped me into being his only line of defense.
He had built layers.
Martin had never truly been next.
“He knew Martin might come after me,” I said.
Benjamin nodded.
“So Thomas created another path.”
“Yes.”
“Where is Rebecca?”
Benjamin looked uncomfortable.
“That’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“No one has heard from her in nine days.”
My blood chilled.
“Since before Thomas died?”
“Yes.”
“And Emily?”
“Also unreachable.”
I stood.
“Martin?”
“We don’t know.”
“Did police check?”
“Samuel has already informed them.”
The office door opened suddenly.
Benjamin’s assistant entered.
“There’s a woman downstairs asking for Mrs. Holloway.”
“Reporter?”
“No.”
She handed Benjamin a note.
He read it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He gave the paper to me.
Three words were written in shaky handwriting.
I’m Emily Bell.
I ran toward the elevator.
Emily was waiting in the lobby.
She was thinner than the photograph.
Her hair was tied into a messy knot.
A little boy slept against her shoulder.
When she saw me, her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re Nancy?”
“Yes.”
She crossed the room and hugged me.
I barely had time to react.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Uncle Thomas told me if anything happened to Mom, I was supposed to find you.”
My body went cold.
“What happened to Rebecca?”
Emily pulled away.
“I don’t know.”
“Where was she last?”
“She called me nine days ago. She sounded scared.”
“What did she say?”
Emily looked at Benjamin.
Then at me.
“She said Martin had found out Uncle Thomas changed something in the family trust.”
My stomach dropped.
“And?”
“She said she was going to meet someone who could prove what Martin had done.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t say.”
Emily shifted her sleeping son.
“Then Mom told me something strange.”
“What?”
“She said, ‘If I don’t call tomorrow, go to Nancy Holloway. She’s the only person Thomas trusted enough to finish this.’”
Behind me, Benjamin whispered a curse.
May you like
Emily began crying.
“My mother never called again.”
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