The fiancé Rebecca never expected me to discover
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Rebecca stood on the other side of the locked door.
“I know Emily showed you the drive.”
Her voice was calm.
Too calm.
Emily grabbed my arm.
“Dad, don’t answer.”
I stared at the door.
“How do you know about the USB?”
Silence.
Then Rebecca laughed softly.
“Because Emily was never as careful as she thought.”
My daughter went pale.
I stepped between her and the door.
“What does that mean?”
“Open the door and we can discuss this like adults.”
“No.”
Her voice hardened.
“Your guests are waiting.”
“They can keep waiting.”
The hallway went quiet.
Then I heard footsteps moving away.
Emily immediately crossed to the laptop.
“She knows.”
“What exactly is on the last recording?”
She looked at me.
“Everything I could get before she realized I was investigating.”
I opened the audio file again.
A man spoke first.
His voice was unfamiliar.
“You need the marriage completed before the trust changes can be challenged.”
Rebecca answered:
“It will be.”
“And the daughter?”
“Emily is becoming a problem.”
“What about the grandson?”
A pause.
“Three years old. He doesn’t understand anything.”
My stomach turned.
The man continued.
“And after the wedding?”
Rebecca’s voice became quieter.
“Then we move to phase two.”
The recording ended.
I stared at Emily.
“What is phase two?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know who that man is?”
She nodded.
“Victor Hale.”
“Who is Victor Hale?”
Emily opened the photograph.
The man beside Rebecca was tall, silver-haired, perhaps sixty.
Then she opened another file.
A newspaper clipping.
The headline mentioned the death of a wealthy widower named Thomas Carrow five years earlier.
Victor Hale had been his estate attorney.
Rebecca appeared in an older photograph beside Thomas.
Except the caption gave her a different name.
Rachel Bennett.
I felt sick.
“She was married to him?”
“Engaged.”
“What happened?”
“He died twelve days before the wedding.”
I looked at Emily.
“How?”
“Officially? Heart failure.”
“And unofficially?”
She opened another file.
Thomas’s daughter had challenged changes made to his estate shortly before his death.
The challenge failed.
A large portion of the assets went into a trust managed by Victor Hale.
I stared at the screen.
“And Rebecca?”
“Disappeared.”
“Until me.”
Emily nodded.
Someone knocked again.
This time it wasn’t Rebecca.
“Dad?”
Daniel.
I opened the door only enough to see him.
“Noah’s with Aunt Melissa downstairs.”
“Good.”
Daniel looked past me at Emily.
Then his face changed.
“Emily? What happened to you?”
“Later.”
He lowered his voice.
“Rebecca’s telling everyone you’re having some kind of medical emergency.”
Of course she was.
“She also told the wedding coordinator to delay twenty minutes.”
