PART 3
Brenda sat across from me in the quiet library of my father’s home. The arrogant smirk she wore at the courthouse was entirely gone.
“I was only eleven years old when Wayne died,” Brenda explained. “He was like a father to me, and my mother spent her whole life insisting that Christopher Lindqvist had him killed.”
She glared at my father with deep resentment, but Christopher remained standing by the window and responded calmly. “I did have a heated disagreement with your brother, Brenda. He was using shell companies to extort our business partners, and when I said ‘make him disappear,’ I was telling my legal team to sever his contracts and remove him from our local projects. I never ordered anyone’s murder.”
“That is a very convenient story,” Brenda snapped.
“That is why you were given an edited recording instead of the full conversation,” Christopher replied.
For years, Brenda had been hunting for evidence against my father. When she discovered Chad was married to Christopher’s secret daughter and that my mother had worked as an administrative assistant for Christopher decades ago, Brenda targeted Chad. Chad thought he had met an ambitious young lover, but Brenda was actually searching his house for hidden corporate files.
Brenda had encouraged Chad to dig through Lorraine’s old storage boxes, where they uncovered the audio tape. Chad, blinded by greed, decided to use it to blackmail my father for millions.
“I wanted to bring Christopher down,” Brenda admitted quietly. “I had no idea Chad was secretly framing you for corporate fraud, and by the time I realized what he was doing to you, I was trapped in his web.”
“Yet you still stood beside him in court and smiled,” I said coldly.
She lowered her eyes and whispered, “I made a terrible mistake.”
I did not forgive her, but we needed the truth. Christopher’s forensic audio experts analyzed the digital recording and found multiple splicing cuts, frequency drops, and artificial silences. Nearly a minute of the original conversation had been intentionally removed.
The answer to who altered the tape appeared inside a second storage box that Lorraine had kept locked in an attic. It contained old financial statements, photos, and a pristine backup copy of the original tape.
On the unedited recording, Christopher could be clearly heard saying, “I want Montgomery removed from the contract and out of the city, but nobody lays a hand on him. Keep this entirely legal.”
The files also revealed another name: Douglas Harrison, Chad’s late father. Douglas had worked in commercial transport in the nineties and died mysteriously when Chad was a teenager.
The prosecutor’s office reopened the investigation into Wayne Montgomery’s death, and an elderly mechanic soon confessed that Douglas Harrison had paid him cash to tamper with the brake lines on Montgomery’s vehicle. The evidence Chad thought would destroy my father actually pointed straight to his own family’s dark criminal past.
Brenda sat frozen as she listened to the mechanic’s official statement. “So I helped the son of the man who actually murdered my brother,” she murmured softly.
Nobody offered a reply, as no words could soften such a painful realization.
However, my mother was still missing. When law enforcement issued a summons for Lorraine, she vanished alongside Chad. The banks had frozen Chad’s corporate accounts while his investors withdrew their funding, and the notary provided text messages showing Chad giving explicit orders to commit fraud.
Late that evening, my phone rang with a call from an unknown number.
“Come alone to your mother’s mountain cabin,” Chad’s voice rasped over the speaker.
“Where is my mother?” I demanded.
Lorraine’s voice echoed in the background. “I am right here, Genevieve.”
“Let her go, Chad,” I pleaded.
Chad sneered into the phone. “Bring the legal release forms for your father’s estate and a signed statement taking full responsibility for the company wire transfers, or nobody leaves this cabin.”
He hung up immediately. Christopher refused to let me go alone, but the police agreed to deploy a tactical unit to surround the rural cabin near Prescott while I made contact under controlled conditions.
When I arrived at the dark, secluded property, Chad opened the front door holding a heavy shotgun. He looked unkempt, his eyes wild with desperation. “Get inside right now.”
Inside the living room sat Lorraine. She was not tied up, showed no physical injuries, and looked entirely comfortable sipping a cup of hot coffee.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, looking between them.
My mother stood up slowly and said, “It means it is finally time you learned the truth about how the world works.”
Chad locked the front door behind me. Lorraine walked over to my husband and affectionately adjusted his shirt collar with a disgusting level of intimacy that made my stomach turn.
In an instant, every strange memory fell into place: the mysterious gifts, the deleted phone logs, the afternoons when Chad claimed he was running errands, and the total lack of remorse my mother showed when framing me.
“No,” I whispered in horror.
My mother smiled coldly and admitted, “Yes, Genevieve. Chad and I have been together for over four years.”
