Chapter 7 - Friday at TenThe FBI did not like my plan.
We were staying under the same roof.
That took effort.
I moved into the east guest suite.
Dad worked downstairs.
Security doubled.
Evelyn came and went.
My phone filled with messages from Nathan, Bianca, reporters and relatives I had not heard from in years.
I answered none.
I spent most of the day staring at my mother’s photograph.
Marcus beside her.
Both young.
Both smiling.
The past is cruel because everyone inside it gets to remain innocent until someone explains what happened next.
Finally, at six in the evening, Dad knocked.
“Come in.”
He entered carrying another box.
Not legal documents.
Photographs.
Letters.
My mother’s journals.
“You deserve everything,” he said.
I looked at the box.
“How much more is there?”
“Enough.”
“Were Mom and Marcus having an affair?”
“No.”
“Were you?”
His eyebrows rose.
“No.”
“With anyone.”
“No.”
“Did you steal the seventy million?”
“No.”
“Did Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
Dad placed a bank ledger in front of me.
“Because eventually we traced it.”
“Then why wasn’t he prosecuted?”
“Your mother begged me not to.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Marcus had a son.”
That surprised me.
“A son?”
“Four years younger than you.”
“What happened to him?”
Dad looked down.
“I don’t know.”
Marcus had been twenty-three when he met my mother, who was nineteen.
They were together for almost three years.
My grandmother hated him.
Not because he was poor.
Because he was reckless.
Marcus loved risk.
Gambling.
Borrowing money.
Schemes.
Eventually my mother left him.
Years later, after she married Dad, Marcus reappeared.
He said he had changed.
My mother convinced Dad to give him a job.
For almost a decade, Marcus was part of the family.
Then the theft happened.
“When we confronted him,” Dad said, “he claimed he took the money because people were threatening his son.”
“Who?”
“He never said.”
“He threatened me because you threatened his son?”
“No. That came later.”
Dad opened a journal.
My mother’s handwriting covered the pages.
One entry was underlined.
Marcus is terrified, but Richard thinks fear is another manipulation. I don’t know which man is right anymore.
Another.
I found the secondary account. Richard didn’t know. Marcus didn’t take all of it. Someone else moved twenty-three million after Marcus disappeared.
I looked up.
“Someone else stole money?”
Dad nodded.
“We learned that only after your mother found these records.”
“Who?”
“We never determined it.”
“Did Marcus know?”
“I believe so.”
Then it became clear.
“That’s why Mom stayed in contact with him.”
“Yes.”
“She was investigating.”
“Yes.”
“Without you.”
“Yes.”
“Because she didn’t trust you?”
Dad looked toward the window.
“Because by then our marriage was difficult.”
That hurt.
Not because children need their parents to have perfect marriages.
Because I had built my own marriage around an illusion of theirs.
Mom and Dad had seemed indestructible.
“She planned to leave you?”
“For a time.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Because she got sick.”
I closed my eyes.
“She stayed because she was dying?”
“No.”
His voice became rough.
“She stayed because we found our way back to each other.”
I wanted to believe that.
Maybe I did.
“What was the thing she never wanted me to know?”
Dad’s face changed.
He opened the final journal.
Inside was an envelope addressed to me.
Never opened.
Never delivered.
Dad handed it over.
“You’ve had this?”
“Your mother asked me to give it to you if Marcus ever came back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me after she died?”
“Because Marcus hadn’t come back.”
“You knew Nathan was financially connected to him.”
“Not until yesterday.”
I opened the envelope.
My mother’s words began:
My darling Claire,
If you are reading this, then a mistake I made before you were born has probably reached you.
I stopped.
My heart thudded.
Dad looked as frightened as I felt.
I continued.
Marcus became convinced that you were his daughter.
The paper slipped from my hands.
“What?”
Dad said nothing.
“No.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
I picked up the letter.
He was wrong. I knew he was wrong. But because of the timing of my early relationship with your father and because Marcus refused to believe I had fully left him behind, he turned suspicion into obsession.
I looked at Dad.
“You’re my father?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“DNA.”
“You tested me?”
“When you were an infant.”
“Without telling me?”
“Your mother agreed.”
I wanted to be angry.
There was too much to choose from.
“Marcus thought I was his child.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why he threatened me?”
“Partly.”
“What does partly mean?”
Dad sat opposite me.
“When you were thirteen, Marcus contacted your mother. He demanded another DNA test. He insisted the first result had been manipulated.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yes.”
“He wanted custody?”
“He wanted access.”
“To me?”
“To the Ashford family.”
The pieces rearranged themselves.
Marcus’s obsession was not paternal love.
It was identity.
Money.
Control.
Revenge.
“Did he ever see me?”
Dad hesitated.
“Once.”
My skin prickled.
“When?”
“You were nine.”
I searched my memory.
Nothing.
“He approached you at a charity polo match. Security stopped him before he could speak to you.”
I suddenly remembered a man beyond a rope barrier.
Gray suit.
A smile.
A security guard moving me away.
A memory so small I had never preserved it.
“That was him?”
“Yes.”
I pressed both hands against my face.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Dad and I looked at each other.
“Don’t.”
It rang again.
Then a text appeared.
A photograph.
Nathan.
He was sitting in a chair.
Blood at the corner of his mouth.
Behind him was a blank concrete wall.
Beneath the photograph:
YOUR HUSBAND HAS MADE TOO MANY MISTAKES.
Another message arrived.
FRIDAY. 10 A.M. COME WITHOUT RICHARD.
Then:
BRING YOUR MOTHER’S LETTER.
Dad stood immediately.
“We call the FBI.”
I stared at Nathan’s photograph.
I should have felt satisfaction.
He had betrayed me.
He had helped bring Marcus back.
He had tried to steal from me.
But he was also the father of my unborn son.
And someone had hurt him.
“No,” I whispered.
Dad stared.
“No?”
“We call everyone.”
I handed him the phone.
“FBI. Police. Your investigators. Everyone.”
Dad nodded.
Then I added:
“But Marcus believes I’m coming alone.”
My father’s face hardened.
“You are not.”
I looked at my mother’s letter.
For twenty-two years, Marcus Rowe had been hiding inside my family’s past.
Now he had stepped into my marriage.
He thought pregnancy made me weak.
He thought betrayal made me frightened.
He thought I would arrive as somebody’s daughter or somebody’s wife.
He was wrong.
“I’m going to meet him.”
Dad started to object.
May you like
I held up one hand.
“And this time, we decide what he sees.”
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