Chapter 6 - THE CONFESSION TAPE
Evelyn didn't lower the rifle. She stared down the barrel at the man she had loved for thirty years, the father of her child, the man whose medical bills she had paid by selling the very house they were standing in.
“You’re going to shoot me, Brad?” Evelyn asked, her voice eerily calm. “To protect a lie?”
Brad’s hands shook. “You don't understand the debt, Evelyn. The $28 million sale tomorrow doesn't even cover half of what I owe. The people I borrowed from... they aren't banks. If that deal falls through, they won't just take the company. They’ll take Claire. They’ll take the boy.”
“So you gave him to a blackmailer to hide him?” Evelyn yelled, the heartbreak finally piercing her composed exterior. “You let our daughter grieve a child that was alive ten miles away?”
“I had to keep the trust intact!” Brad screamed, a tear slipping down his face. “If Claire had a bastard child, your father’s money vanished! I was protecting our legacy!”
“You were protecting your ego!” Evelyn fired back.
From the driveway, Julian’s voice cried out. “Brad, let them go! The police are on their way. I pressed the SOS button in Evelyn’s car.”
Brad panicked. He looked at the flashing headlights in the driveway, then back at Evelyn.
Sabrina saw her opening. She lunged toward Brad, grabbing his arm to wrestle the gun away. “Shoot her, you idiot! If she talks, we both go to prison!”
“Get off me!” Brad yelled, shoving Sabrina backward.
In the struggle, a deafening BANG echoed through the living room.
Evelyn flinched, closing her eyes.
But she didn't feel any pain.
She opened her eyes to see Sabrina clutching her shoulder, a patch of crimson blooming rapidly across her expensive silk blouse. She stumbled backward, crashing into the glass coffee table, shattering it into pieces.
Brad stood frozen, staring at his smoking gun. He dropped it onto the floor, stepping back in horror. “I... I didn't mean to. She grabbed my arm.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.
Evelyn lowered the hunting rifle. She walked over to the man she had once called her husband. Brad fell to his knees on the Persian rug, burying his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably as the reality of his ruined empire crashed down upon him.
Evelyn didn't comfort him. She didn't touch him.
She reached into the inner pocket of Brad’s discarded suit jacket on the floor and pulled out his cell phone. She unlocked it—she still knew his passcode, his mother’s birthday—and opened his voice memo app.
She pressed record.
“Say it, Brad,” Evelyn commanded, holding the phone in front of his face.
Brad looked up, his eyes bloodshot and terrified. “What?”
“The police will be here in sixty seconds. If you want any chance of a plea deal, you are going to confess, right now, into this phone, that you forged the adoption papers. You will state clearly that Claire had no knowledge of this, and that you used my 51% ownership illegally.”
“Evelyn, please—”
“Say it!” she roared, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
Brad swallowed hard. Over the wail of approaching sirens, his broken voice filled the room. He confessed to the fake adoption, the extortion, the hidden debt, and the illegal transfer of the cottage.
Evelyn stopped the recording and emailed the file directly to Thomas Keller.
The red and blue lights of the police cruisers illuminated the living room, flashing against the walls like a strobe light. Officers burst through the front door, weapons drawn.
“Drop the weapons! Hands in the air!”
Evelyn placed the phone on a side table. She walked past Brad, who was being forced to the floor and handcuffed. She walked past Sabrina, who was screaming for a paramedic.
She walked out the front door, down the stone steps, and opened the back door of her sedan.
Julian was sitting in the backseat, his arms wrapped tightly around the little boy, who was crying softly.
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Evelyn climbed in beside them. She reached out and gently pulled her grandson into her arms. He smelled like vanilla and childhood, and as he buried his face in her coat, Evelyn closed her eyes.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she whispered, kissing the top of his blonde head. “Grandma is here. And nobody is ever going to hurt you again.”
