Chapter 2 - THE MOTHER'S CONFESSION
The photograph trembled in my manicured hands. I stared at the image of my mother, Eleanor, standing beside my supposedly dead husband’s hospital bed just three months ago. The elegant restaurant around me faded into a dull, echoing hum.
Twenty-five years of grief. Twenty-five years of placing flowers on an empty grave, believing the man I loved had burned to ashes.
And my mother had known.
I looked down at Ben. The little boy was watching me with wide, terrified eyes, clutching his dented blue cookie tin to his chest. His torn coat seemed so incredibly small in the opulent dining room.
“Ben,” I said, my voice dangerously calm, the kind of calm that precedes a hurricane. “I need you to come with me. Right now.”
“But my cookies—”
“I’m buying them all. And I’m buying your father’s life back,” I promised, standing up. I threw a hundred-dollar bill onto the table to cover my untouched wine and took the boy’s small, cold hand.
My driver, Thomas, was waiting outside in the freezing November rain. I ushered Ben into the warm leather interior of the town car.
“My mother’s penthouse, Thomas. Drive fast.”
As the car wove through the slick Manhattan streets, I couldn't stop looking at the wedding ring in my palm. The tiny scratch Daniel had made while fixing the cabinets in our tiny first apartment. It was real. He was real.
We arrived at my mother’s luxury building on the Upper East Side. I bypassed the doorman, pulling Ben into the private elevator. I keyed in my access code.
When the brass doors slid open, I didn't announce myself. I marched straight into the sprawling, white-marble living room.
My mother, Eleanor, was seventy-eight years old, but she still carried herself like a queen. However, tonight, the queen was panicking. Two massive leather suitcases were open on the velvet sofa, and she was frantically stuffing them with designer clothes and jewelry boxes.
She froze when she saw me. Then, her eyes darted to Ben. All the color drained from her perfectly powdered face.
“Evelyn,” she gasped, dropping a diamond necklace onto the rug. “What are you doing here? Who is this child?”
“Don't play games with me, Mother,” I snapped, throwing the photograph onto the glass coffee table. It landed perfectly face-up. “Why were you visiting my dead husband three months ago?”
Eleanor stared at the photo. Her hands began to shake. She collapsed onto the sofa, covering her face.
“I did it for you, Evie,” she sobbed, a pathetic, hollow sound. “I did it to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” I demanded, stepping closer.
“From Charles!” she cried out, looking up at me with terrified eyes. “Your brother isn't the man you think he is. Twenty-five years ago, when your father left the majority of the company to you and Daniel, Charles lost his mind. He hired a man to burn your house down to destroy the original deed.”
Answer one. The fire wasn't an accident. It was a corporate assassination ordered by my own flesh and blood.
But open two. “If Charles wanted the deed destroyed, why didn't Daniel come to me? Why did he hide?”
Eleanor swallowed hard, her eyes darting nervously toward the elevator doors. “Because Charles framed Daniel for murder, Evelyn. The arsonist Charles hired… Daniel fought him inside the burning house. The man died in the fire. Charles had the police in his pocket. He told Daniel that if he ever showed his face, he would be arrested for murder, and Charles would have him killed in prison.”
I felt physically sick. My husband had been trapped in a living nightmare, forced to abandon his own life to survive.
“So you paid him off,” I whispered, realizing the horrific truth. “You visited him every Christmas not out of kindness, but to pay for his silence. To keep the scandal quiet.”
“I paid for his medical bills!” Eleanor defended herself defensively. “When his heart started failing, I opened the Zurich account for him! I kept him alive, Evelyn!”
“You kept him in a cage!” I screamed, tears finally spilling over my cheeks.
Suddenly, Ben tugged on my sleeve. His little body was trembling violently. He wasn't looking at my mother. He was looking at the elevator display panel.
The numbers were climbing. Someone had used an override key to bring the private car up.
“Mother, why are you packing?” I asked, a cold dread pooling in my stomach.
“Because Charles found out about the Zurich account yesterday,” Eleanor whispered, tears ruining her mascara. “He knows Daniel is alive. And he knows I’ve been hiding him.”
The brass doors of the elevator chimed.
They slid open, and my older brother, Charles, stepped into the penthouse. He was wearing an immaculate bespoke suit, looking every inch the respectable billionaire.
But his eyes were dead. Cold and merciless.
He didn't look at me or our mother. He looked directly at the little boy hiding behind my legs.
Charles reached into his tailored pocket and pulled out two small, scuffed plastic objects. He tossed them onto the glass coffee table. They clattered loudly next to the photograph.
May you like
They were two black coat buttons.
“I was wondering how the carpenter’s little bastard slipped away from my men this afternoon,” Charles said smoothly, adjusting his cuffs. “I suppose he ran to find his new mommy.”
