Chapter 6
I did not let Sophie out of my sight.
For three days, we stayed at my mother’s house while the police searched for Ryan.
Amanda obeyed the no-contact order.
Cynthia did not.
She stood outside the gate with reporters and claimed I had staged the bridal suite incident to avoid marrying her daughter.
“She is trying to destroy me publicly,” I told Leah.
“She is trying to distract everyone from the evidence,” Leah replied.
Videos from the wedding had already spread online.
One showed Amanda being led away in her gown.
Another captured Sophie asking me not to marry her.
People chose sides without knowing us.
Some called me a protective father.
Others called Sophie a trained liar.
I stopped reading after someone accused my child of ruining Amanda’s life for attention.
But my mother kept watching.
“What if this hurts your company?” she asked.
“What if silence hurts Sophie?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
The tension between us had not faded.
She wanted forgiveness for hiding the truth about Ryan.
I was not ready.
On the fourth morning, Detective Ruiz arrived with news.
The blood in Ryan’s car belonged to Paul Mercer, the fake notary.
Police had found Paul alive in a motel.
“He says Ryan attacked him after the document was filed,” Ruiz explained.
“Why?”
“Paul threatened to confess unless Ryan paid him more.”
“Where is Ryan?”
“Paul doesn’t know.”
Ruiz opened a folder.
“He did identify the owner of Northstar Capital.”
She slid a photograph toward me.
Cynthia Cole smiled back from the page.
Amanda’s mother had financed the fraudulent loan.
The theft went beyond an affair.
It was a family operation.
“How long have they been doing this?”
“We found similar property transfers in two other states.”
“Other victims?”
“Two widowers. Both married women connected to Cynthia.”
I felt cold.
“Was Amanda involved?”
“In at least one case.”
Leah leaned forward.
“What happened to the men?”
“One declared bankruptcy. The other died six months after his wedding.”
Silence filled the room.
“How did he die?” I asked.
“An accidental overdose.”
I thought of the sedative in my tea.
My mother covered her mouth.
“They were going to kill you.”
Ruiz did not confirm it.
She did not need to.
That afternoon, Amanda appeared on television outside the courthouse.
She wore a plain blue dress and no makeup.
She looked fragile.
She claimed I had controlled her, frightened her, and used my influence to turn the police against her.
Then she looked directly into the camera.
“I loved Sophie as my own daughter.”
I switched off the television.
Sophie stood behind me.
“Why did she say that?”
I crouched beside her.
“Because some people lie when the truth scares them.”
“Will people believe her?”
“Some might.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“What if the judge does?”
I hugged her.
“We have the video.”
“What if it disappears?”
The question startled me.
“Why would it disappear?”
“Amanda said bad things disappear when her mommy pays enough.”
I called Ruiz.
She assured me the evidence had multiple secured copies.
Then Sophie told us something new.
On the morning of the wedding, Amanda had taken her into the bridal suite and ordered her to carry a sealed envelope down the aisle.
“She said I had to give it to Uncle Ryan after you signed.”
“What happened to the envelope?” I asked.
“I hid it.”
“Where?”
“In the piano bench at the wedding place.”
Ruiz and I drove there immediately.
The venue had been closed since the scandal.
The envelope remained beneath a stack of sheet music.
Inside was a flash drive and a handwritten note from Amanda.
“Use the video if Daniel refuses. Make sure he understands what happens to Sophie when he stops cooperating.”
Ruiz inserted the drive into an isolated police laptop.
The video showed me asleep in my bed.
Amanda stood over me, holding an empty medicine bottle.
Then the recording shifted to Sophie sleeping in the next room.
Ryan’s voice whispered behind the camera.
“One loss made him obedient. Another will break him.”
My stomach turned.
Ruiz stopped the video.
“Do you recognize what he meant by one loss?”
“Grace.”
My late wife had died when her car went over a mountain guardrail.
The police ruled it an accident.
Amanda entered my life ten months later.
At the time, it felt like chance.
Now nothing felt accidental.
I called the detective who had investigated Grace’s crash.
He remembered the case.
“The brake line failed,” he told me. “We believed road debris caused it.”
“Could someone have cut it?”
He hesitated.
“If the cut was damaged by the crash, it might have looked accidental.”
“Was anything stolen from the car?”
“Her purse was never recovered.”
Grace’s purse contained her identification, our address, and photographs of Sophie and me.
I stared at the gold locket now sealed inside an evidence bag.
“What if Amanda knew Grace before she knew me?”
Ruiz requested the old case file.
Before it arrived, my mother called from the next room.
I heard panic in her voice.
Sophie was gone.
May you like
On her pillow lay a note written in purple crayon.
“A lady said Daddy sent her.”
