Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW MY MOTHER
I spent the next morning in my father's library.
The photograph lay on the desk between us.
My father looked older than I remembered.
“Why was Camila with Mom?”
He didn't answer immediately.
“Your mother and Camila knew each other through a charitable foundation.”
“What foundation?”
“The Hartford Family Trust. Your mother helped establish it.”
I frowned.
“I thought it was created after she died.”
“No. It existed before that.”
“Then why did you never tell me?”
He looked at the photograph.
“Because your mother asked me not to involve you in the business.”
I felt a familiar frustration rise.
“Everyone keeps making decisions about what I can handle.”
“Elizabeth, you were sixteen.”
“I'm not sixteen anymore.”
He nodded.
“You're right.”
He opened a drawer and removed a thin leather journal.
It belonged to my mother.
I recognized her handwriting immediately.
“She kept records of the foundation's donations, investments, and beneficiaries,” he explained. “A few weeks before her death, she discovered irregularities.”
“Money was missing?”
“Yes. Large amounts.”
I opened the journal.
Several pages contained handwritten notes about companies I didn't recognize. Near the back, I found Camila's name.
Beside it was a sentence:
Camila says the Thompson family is only a temporary partner. I don't trust the men she's bringing into this.
I looked at my father.
“Who were the men?”
“I don't know. Your mother never explained.”
I turned another page.
A second note had been underlined twice.
If anything happens to me, make sure Elizabeth never signs the original transfer agreement.
My hands went cold.
“What transfer agreement?”
My father shook his head.
“I've never seen it.”
Before I could ask more, the front door opened.
Oliver walked into the library.
My father stood.
“You have some nerve coming here.”
Oliver looked exhausted.
“I need to speak with Elizabeth.”
“Get out.”
“Please. Just five minutes.”
I raised my hand.
“Let him speak.”
My father looked at me but reluctantly stepped aside.
Oliver approached the desk.
“I didn't steal anything from your father's office.”
“You copied confidential files.”
“I was trying to find something.”
“What?”
He glanced at my father.
“Evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“That my mother has been using the company to move money.”
My father laughed without humor.
“And you only discovered this after your wife found your signature on a fraudulent acquisition document?”
Oliver lowered his head.
“I know how it sounds.”
“Then explain.”
He took a breath.
“Six months ago, I found a series of payments in the Thompson Group accounts. They were going to companies that didn't appear to exist. I asked my mother about them. She told me they were part of a private investment arrangement.”
“And you believed her?” I asked.
“At first.”
“What changed?”
“She started asking me to sign documents without reading them. Then she told me you were going to inherit Hartford Technologies and that we needed to secure our future before your father changed his estate plans.”
I stared at him.
“So you married me for the inheritance?”
“No!”
His answer came too quickly.
Then he looked at me.
“I didn't know who you were when we met. I loved you before I knew about your father.”
“Then why did you sign?”
“Because she threatened me.”
“With what?”
Oliver reached into his jacket and placed a small envelope on the desk.
Inside was a photograph of a woman standing beside a car.
I recognized her immediately.
It was Camila.
But she was not alone.
The man beside her was a former Hartford Technologies executive who had supposedly died in a boating accident twelve years earlier.
My father took the photograph.
His face went completely white.
“That's impossible,” he whispered.
“Who is he?” I asked.
My father stared at the image.
Then he said the name I had heard only once in my childhood.
“Richard Vale.”
The man my mother had accused of stealing from the foundation.
The man who had supposedly died the night she discovered the missing money.
Oliver swallowed.
May you like
“He's alive.”
And according to Oliver, Richard Vale was the person who had been secretly financing Camila's campaign against me.
