Chapter 7 - THE SECRET THOMAS TOOK TO HIS GRAVE
My granddaughter returned to Cora shortly after midnight.
Cora had awakened by then.
There was no way to hide what happened.
When the nurse placed the baby against her chest, Cora sobbed so violently that her surgical incision hurt.
I sat beside her.
“She’s okay.”
Cora kissed the baby’s tiny forehead again and again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“I brought him into our family.”
“You loved someone who deceived you.”
“I should have known.”
I touched her cheek.
“Shame belongs to Marcus. Not you.”
She looked toward the guarded door.
“Where is he?”
“In custody.”
“Did he take her?”
“He arranged it.”
Her eyes closed.
Something ended inside my daughter at that moment.
Not love.
Love had probably died long ago.
Hope.
The hope that somewhere beneath Marcus’s cruelty lived the man she thought she married.
There wasn’t.
The next morning, federal investigators searched Saint Jude.
Marcus’s offices were sealed.
Computers were seized.
Accounts frozen.
Board members began resigning before lunch.
By afternoon, news vans surrounded the hospital.
The celebrated surgeon’s empire was collapsing.
But I had one unanswered question.
Thomas.
Marcus agreed to speak only if I came.
I almost refused.
Then I remembered his words.
Thomas killed himself.
I needed the truth.
Marcus sat behind glass wearing jail clothing.
Without the suit, white coat and hospital corridors, he looked smaller.
Not harmless.
Just ordinary.
I picked up the phone.
“Tell me about Thomas.”
Marcus leaned back.
“He was diagnosed six months before he died.”
“By whom?”
“An oncologist in Switzerland.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He thought you’d spend his final months watching him die.”
“That was his decision to make?”
“No.”
For the first time, Marcus sounded sincere.
“It was selfish.”
“What did you do?”
“Thomas discovered the procurement fraud. He confronted me.”
“And?”
“I begged him not to report me.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“No.”
“Richard?”
“Yes.”
“What did Richard do?”
“Threatened Cora.”
My blood chilled.
“How?”
“He said if Thomas destroyed us, he’d destroy her too. Financially. Professionally. Whatever it took.”
“And Thomas?”
“He made a deal.”
“What deal?”
“He delayed the investigation.”
“In exchange for Cora’s safety?”
“Yes.”
“But you married her.”
Marcus looked away.
“That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“You expect me to believe you loved her?”
“I did.”
“No. You wanted her.”
His eyes returned to mine.
Maybe he knew the difference now.
Maybe not.
“Thomas collapsed naturally,” he said. “The anticoagulant came from medication prescribed overseas. I tried to save him.”
“Then why did he write your initials?”
“Because two days earlier, I stole the final audit file.”
There it was.
Betrayal.
Not murder.
Still unforgivable.
“Why tell me this?”
“Because Richard will tell you I killed him.”
“Why?”
“To save himself.”
I stood.
Marcus leaned toward the glass.
“Eleanor.”
I stopped.
“There’s one more thing.”
I waited.
“Thomas left you a recording.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where?”
“Richard has it.”
“How do you know?”
“I watched him steal it from Thomas’s safe after the funeral.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it incriminated us.”
“In what?”
“Everything.”
I left.
Two hours later, Canadian authorities detained Richard Whitmore at a private airfield outside Montreal.
His luggage contained three passports, $460,000 in cash and an encrypted laptop.
But no recording.
Richard refused to cooperate.
Then Frank found Melissa Crane.
She hadn’t fled.
She was hiding.
And she wanted immunity.
Melissa revealed that Marcus had ordered the kidnapping, but Richard had turned it into something more dangerous.
Richard intended to use the baby as leverage to force me to transfer control of Kentwell.
When Marcus realized Richard planned to harm the child if I refused, he called me.
It did not redeem Marcus.
But it explained why he gave us the address.
Melissa also knew about Thomas’s recording.
“Richard kept it somewhere no one would search.”
“Where?”
She looked at me.
“Your house.”
My breath caught.
“He entered after Thomas’s funeral. Hid it there because if investigators ever found it, he could say Thomas left it himself.”
“Where?”
“Inside Thomas’s piano.”
I drove home.
The piano had not been played in four years.
Frank removed the rear panel.
A small digital recorder fell into his hand.
I recognized it immediately.
Thomas used it for business notes.
I pressed play.
Static.
Then my husband’s voice filled the room.
“Ellie.”
My knees nearly gave way.
Nobody had called me that since he died.
“If you’re hearing this, then I ran out of time.”
I sat on the piano bench.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was sick.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“I wanted my last months to belong to us, not cancer.”
I covered my mouth.
Then his voice changed.
“There is something else. Richard has been stealing from the company. Marcus helped him. I have evidence.”
A pause.
“But there is one person I’m trying to protect above everything.”
Cora.
I knew it before he said her name.
“Our daughter.”
Then Thomas said something none of us expected.
“Marcus has already hurt her once.”
I froze.
May you like
The recording continued.
“And she doesn’t remember.”
