Chapter 7
I turned toward my mother.
She looked shocked.
“Thomas.”
Dad tried to sit up.
I helped him.
“You took it.”
Mom shook her head.
“No.”
“You were here.”
“No.”
Dad pointed toward the floor.
“Your shoe print is downstairs.”
Mom looked at me.
“I have not been inside this house in seven years.”
Hale arrived behind her.
“We can test that.”
Mom’s face tightened.
Dad laughed painfully.
“Tell her.”
“Thomas, you’re confused.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Sarah, your mother came here two weeks ago.”
My breath caught.
Mom closed her eyes.
That was enough.
“You were here?”
She slowly nodded.
“Why?”
“To get the ledger.”
I stared at her.
“And you told me you didn’t know where it was?”
“I knew where I had hidden it seven years ago. I didn’t know whether it was still there.”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
Dad snapped, “You told me you did.”
Mom looked furious.
“Because I wanted you to stop searching for it.”
“Why?”
“To protect Sarah!”
I laughed.
There was that word again.
Protect.
I was beginning to hate it.
Hale separated them.
“Mrs. Bennett—”
“Fairmont,” Mom corrected automatically.
Dad looked wounded.
She noticed.
So did I.
Even after seven years apart, they could still hurt each other with a single word.
Hale continued.
“Claire, tell me exactly what happened two weeks ago.”
Mom sat.
She said she had entered my house while Ryan and I were away.
I stared at her.
“You broke into my home?”
“I still had an old key.”
“That is not better.”
She ignored the comment.
She opened the fireplace compartment.
The ledger was gone.
Ryan appeared before she could leave.
“He caught you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“He smiled.”
That was somehow worse than shouting.
“He said he had been waiting for me.”
My stomach turned.
Ryan had known.
He had probably been watching the fireplace for months.
Mom tried to leave.
Ryan blocked the door.
Then he showed her photographs.
Pictures of me sleeping.
Shopping.
Driving.
Sitting at my desk.
I felt physically sick.
“He said if I went to police, he would make you disappear.”
Dad’s face twisted with anger.
“So you said nothing.”
“I was terrified.”
“And two days later Ryan filed paperwork to take control of Sarah’s trust.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You never know until afterward!”
Mom stood.
“You think I enjoyed leaving my daughter?”
Dad stood too.
“You think I enjoyed burying an empty coffin?”
“Stop!”
My voice silenced them.
I looked from one parent to the other.
“You can hate each other later.”
Mom’s face crumpled.
“I don’t hate him.”
Dad looked away.
That hurt her.
I saw it.
But we had bigger problems.
“Where is the ledger now?”
Nobody knew.
Hale spoke.
“If Ryan had it, why keep looking?”
Dad frowned.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
I remembered the destroyed fireplace.
“Victor thought it was still there.”
“Which means Ryan didn’t tell him he had it,” Hale said.
Mom nodded.
“Ryan wanted something for himself.”
The trust.
Revenge.
Leverage over Victor.
Maybe all three.
Dad suddenly looked at me.
“The second deed.”
“What about it?”
“If Ryan transferred the house to Fairmont Residential Holdings, he may not have been stealing the house.”
I stared at him.
“He beat me because I wouldn’t sign ownership papers.”
“Yes. But why would he need a second set of signatures if the property was already transferred?”
Evelyn arrived thirty minutes later.
She reviewed the documents police had recovered.
Then she gave us the answer.
“The recorded deed is fraudulent.”
“I know.”
“But it may not have been intended to permanently transfer ownership.”
“What does that mean?”
She pointed at several clauses.
“Ryan used the property as collateral.”
“For what?”
“A private loan.”
“How much?”
She looked at me.
“Eight million dollars.”
I almost laughed again.
Of course.
Another number I couldn’t comprehend.
“Who lent him eight million dollars?”
She turned the page.
“Fairmont Capital Partners.”
Mom went pale.
“Victor.”
Evelyn nodded.
“So Ryan borrowed money from Victor using my house as collateral?”
“And possibly using your trust assets as additional security.”
“Why?”
Hale answered.
“To build a war chest.”
I looked at him.
“For what?”
“Maybe to destroy Victor.”
Dad shook his head.
“Ryan didn’t want justice.”
No.
He wanted revenge.
Suddenly I understood something.
“He wanted the ledger.”
Everyone looked at me.
“If the ledger proves Victor committed crimes, Ryan could threaten to expose him.”
Mom nodded slowly.
“Blackmail.”
“And with eight million dollars from Victor himself…”
Dad finished the thought.
“Ryan could take Victor’s money and then destroy him.”
A terrible kind of admiration almost flickered through me.
Almost.
Then I remembered the mop.
Ryan wasn’t some wounded hero.
He was willing to destroy me too.
My phone rang.
This time, it was Lauren.
“Sarah, my son is missing.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Ethan didn’t come home from school.”
“Did you call police?”
“They’re here.”
“Could he have gone somewhere?”
“No. I got a text.”
Her voice broke.
“What text?”
She sent me a screenshot.
One sentence.
BRING SARAH TO ME OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR SON AGAIN.
I stared at it.
“Who sent this?”
“Blocked number.”
Hale took the phone.
“Lauren, this is Detective Hale. Do not respond. Stay where you are.”
She started crying.
“That’s my child.”
“We’re going to find him.”
She shouted, “My father did this!”
Hale stayed calm.
“We don’t know that yet.”
“I do!”
Then she said something that changed our understanding again.
“Ethan was with Ryan yesterday.”
I stared at the phone.
“What?”
Lauren sobbed.
“Ryan picked him up from school.”
“Why would your son go with my husband?”
“Because Ethan knows him.”
“How?”
Silence.
“Lauren.”
Her voice became barely audible.
“Ryan is Ethan’s father.”
The room went dead.
I felt like I had stopped understanding English.
“What did you say?”
“Ryan and I were together fifteen years ago.”
Before I had ever met him.
Before I mattered to him.
“We were nineteen,” she continued. “I got pregnant. Ryan’s father had just been released from prison. My father hated the Coles. He threatened to cut me off. Ryan left.”
“And he never told me.”
“No.”
“Does Ethan know?”
“He found out last year.”
I stared at the wall.
Ryan had a fourteen-year-old son.
With my cousin.
There was no end to the lies.
Hale asked, “Could Ethan have left willingly with Ryan?”
Lauren hesitated.
“Yes.”
That changed everything.
Maybe Ethan wasn’t kidnapped.
Maybe he was helping his father.
Or maybe a fourteen-year-old boy had been pulled into a war created by adults decades before he was born.
I understood that feeling.
Hale arranged to track Ethan’s phone.
The last signal came from an abandoned Fairmont warehouse.
The same warehouse Ryan had told us to visit.
We drove there with police.
This time I stayed behind the line.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I was finally learning that running toward danger wasn’t the same as controlling my life.
The police entered.
Ten minutes later, Hale emerged.
His face looked grim.
I ran toward him.
“Ethan?”
“He’s alive.”
Lauren broke down.
“Where?”
“Inside.”
“Ryan?”
“Gone.”
“Victor?”
“Gone.”
My chest tightened.
“What did they find?”
Hale looked at me.
“A video.”
Inside the warehouse, Ethan sat wrapped in a blanket.
He was shaking but unharmed.
Lauren held him like she would never release him again.
Police showed us the video.
Ryan appeared on screen.
He sat in a chair.
Behind him was a concrete wall.
He looked exhausted.
But calm.
“Sarah,” he said to the camera.
I hated hearing my name in his voice.
“If you’re watching this, then you know about Ethan.”
Lauren started crying again.
Ryan continued.
“I never planned for you to find out like this.”
I whispered, “You never planned for me to find out anything.”
Then Ryan lifted something into view.
A thick black ledger.
Mom gasped.
He had it.
“The evidence everybody wants.”
Ryan stared into the camera.
“Victor murdered my father.”
Lauren covered Ethan’s ears.
Ryan continued.
“He arranged the prison sentence. Then years later, when my father threatened to expose him, Victor killed him and made it look like an overdose.”
Dad’s face hardened.
Ryan held up the ledger.
“And Claire knew.”
I turned toward Mom.
She had gone white.
“No,” I whispered.
Ryan looked directly into the camera.
“She has known for twenty years.”
I stared at my mother.
“Mom?”
Tears filled her eyes.
Ryan’s recorded voice continued.
“And Thomas knew too.”
I turned toward Dad.
He looked destroyed.
“No.”
Neither of them spoke.
The video ended with Ryan saying one final thing.
“I’m done protecting your parents, Sarah.”
The screen went black.
I stared at the two people who had raised me.
“Tell me he’s lying.”
Mom cried silently.
Dad closed his eyes.
May you like
“Tell me!”
Finally Dad whispered, “He isn’t.”
