Chapter 6 - The Marriage They Had Planned
Nobody spoke.
Caroline walked into the room.
She carried no dramatic evidence.
No mysterious suitcase.
Just a worn leather handbag.
That somehow made her more unsettling.
Marcus stared.
"Katherine never mentioned you."
"I know."
"Why?"
Caroline's expression tightened.
"Our father had another family before he met Katherine's mother."
She explained that she and Katherine shared a father but had different mothers.
They met as adults.
Quietly.
Katherine had feared family scandal, especially during the early years of Marcus's growing public profile.
Their relationship had been complicated.
Sometimes close.
Sometimes nonexistent.
"Did you work with David?"
I asked.
Caroline looked at me.
"No."
"We have your voice."
"You have someone who sounds like me."
Helen played the recording.
Caroline listened.
Her expression changed.
"I know that conversation."
My pulse accelerated.
"You just said you weren't involved."
"I wasn't."
She looked at Eleanor.
"She was."
Eleanor recoiled.
"What?"
Caroline pointed toward the recording.
"That isn't me. It's you."
Helen frowned.
"The voices don't match."
"Because it's altered."
The explanation was less supernatural and more disturbing.
David had manipulated recordings.
He had access to voice samples from old family videos through files Eleanor had kept.
The goal wasn't sophisticated fraud.
It was confusion.
If discovered, the recordings would send us chasing ghosts.
"Why Katherine?" I asked.
"Because David knew your father would stop thinking rationally if he heard her voice."
Marcus looked ashamed.
David understood grief.
And weaponized it.
Caroline had learned about David through Eleanor.
Years earlier, Eleanor contacted her seeking information about Katherine.
Caroline, still resentful of her half sister, gave her small details.
Nothing financial.
Nothing she considered dangerous.
But those details helped Eleanor build a picture of our family.
"I didn't know she planned to use you," Caroline said.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
She accepted the accusation.
"I deserve that."
We spent the next several days assembling the truth.
It was uglier than a single conspiracy.
Eleanor had started it.
Years earlier, she had convinced herself the Sterling family owed her compensation for the career she'd lost through her own misconduct.
When she learned Katherine's daughter had distanced herself from Marcus, she saw an opportunity.
David was supposed to meet me.
Charm me.
Gain access.
Take a relatively small amount.
Then disappear.
Except David changed the plan.
He married me.
According to Eleanor, because he fell in love.
According to the financial records, because marriage gave him better access.
Maybe both were true.
That was the hardest possibility.
People wanted betrayal to erase love.
It didn't.
David might have loved me.
He simply loved himself more.
Three days after I left the house, he appeared at my office.
Security stopped him downstairs.
I agreed to meet him in a conference room.
Alone except for cameras and an attorney outside.
David looked exhausted.
"I'm sorry."
I waited.
"I mean it."
"For hitting me?"
"For everything."
"Everything is a large category."
He looked down.
"I knew who you were before we met."
"I know."
"My mother told me to approach you."
"I know."
"I agreed."
That still hurt.
"But I didn't expect to love you."
I almost smiled.
"You keep saying that like it fixes something."
"It doesn't."
"No."
He looked at me.
"I loved our mornings. Our stupid arguments about movies. The way you leave coffee everywhere and forget where you put it. I loved you."
"And stole from me."
His eyes filled.
"Yes."
"And isolated me from my father."
"Yes."
"And intercepted Rebecca's letters."
"Yes."
"And hit me."
His voice became almost inaudible.
"Yes."
I sat back.
There it was.
No excuse.
For once.
"Why are you here?"
"Because my mother has disappeared."
I frowned.
"What?"
"She left the hotel yesterday."
"Maybe she doesn't want to see you."
"She took the Northstar originals."
I stood.
"What originals?"
"The ones that weren't in storage."
Of course.
There was always another layer.
"What do they contain?"
David hesitated.
"Signatures."
"Whose?"
"Yours."
"Forged?"
He nodded.
"And?"
"Your father's."
I went cold.
"Forged?"
David looked at me.
"No."
That changed everything.
Marcus had signed something.
"What did he sign?"
"A private settlement."
"With whom?"
"Eleanor."
"When?"
"Twenty-seven years ago."
I stared.
My father had claimed he didn't know the full story.
Had he lied?
I left David under supervision and called Marcus.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
I drove to his office.
Empty.
His assistant said he'd left after receiving a package.
"Where did he go?"
"He didn't say."
"What package?"
She handed me the discarded wrapping.
No return address.
Inside the trash was a torn strip of paper.
I unfolded it.
Marcus,
You told Sarah you didn't know.
Let's see if you're willing to say that while looking at your own signature.
Meet me where Katherine made you choose.
—E
My heartbeat accelerated.
Where Katherine made you choose.
I called Victoria.
She knew immediately.
"The old Sterling Foundation building."
It had been closed for renovation.
I drove there with security.
The front door was unlocked.
Inside, lights burned on the second floor.
I climbed the stairs.
Voices came from the former boardroom.
Eleanor.
Marcus.
I approached.
Then stopped outside the door.
Eleanor said:
"Tell her what you did, Marcus."
My father answered:
"Sarah has nothing to do with this."
"She has everything to do with it."
I pushed the door open.
Both turned.
Marcus looked devastated.
Eleanor held a yellowed document.
I walked inside.
"What did you sign?"
My father closed his eyes.
Eleanor extended the paper toward me.
"A settlement."
I read the first paragraph.
Then the second.
Marcus had paid Eleanor after her termination.
Not because she was innocent.
Because Katherine had asked him to.
"Why?"
Marcus whispered:
"Because Eleanor was pregnant."
I looked at her.
Then at him.
And suddenly understood the secret Eleanor had protected for twenty-seven years.
I looked at David's date of birth on the document.
Then at my father.
"No."
Marcus didn't answer.
Eleanor smiled sadly.
May you like
And said:
"Now ask him whose son David really is."
