Chapter 8 - The Secret Between Their Fathers
Adrian did not answer immediately.
Genevieve waited.
“Richard was trying to divide us,” he finally said.
“That doesn't mean he was lying.”
“No.”
“You knew something.”
“I suspected.”
“What?”
Adrian looked toward the boxes Thomas had hidden.
“My father didn't leave Hayes Logistics willingly.”
“We know that.”
“No. I mean he didn't leave Thomas.”
Genevieve frowned.
Adrian retrieved one of the oldest binders.
Inside were letters between Victor Vale and Thomas Hayes.
They had started Hayes Logistics together.
Victor handled financing.
Thomas handled operations.
The letters were warm.
Almost brotherly.
Then their tone changed.
Harrison Witmore had approached them about port access.
Victor wanted the investment.
Thomas refused because the contract would give outsiders too much control.
Weeks later, Victor's shares were supposedly sold.
The signature was forged.
“Your father knew?” Genevieve asked.
“Eventually.”
“When?”
“Years later.”
“Why didn't he fight?”
“He was sick.”
Adrian showed her another letter.
Victor had discovered the fraud shortly before his death.
He had written to Thomas.
Tom,
I blamed you for twenty years.
I thought you stole the company from me.
Today I learned you were lied to as well.
If I don't get the chance to fix this, make sure our children never inherit our hatred.
Genevieve reread the final sentence.
“Our fathers wanted us to know each other.”
Adrian nodded.
“Apparently.”
The idea should have felt sentimental.
Instead, Genevieve felt tired.
“I don't want another inheritance.”
Adrian understood.
“Neither do I.”
They spent the morning turning evidence over to investigators.
Samuel Pierce was located in Wisconsin.
He confirmed Richard had paid him to tamper with Thomas's first vehicle.
But Richard had been telling the truth about one thing.
Pierce had never touched the replacement car.
The recovered dash-camera footage showed Thomas following Richard after their confrontation.
Rain.
High speed.
A curve.
Thomas's car losing traction.
No collision.
No second vehicle.
No sabotage.
Genevieve watched only once.
Her father had not been murdered.
But Richard's crimes had placed him on that road.
Richard had hidden the footage to protect himself from the investigation into fraud and the earlier sabotage attempt.
The truth was messier than Genevieve wanted.
That made it feel real.
There would be no single villain responsible for every terrible thing.
Richard had betrayed Thomas.
Harrison had corrupted the system.
Caleb had sold information.
Preston had manipulated Genevieve.
And Thomas himself had made one fatal decision in anger.
Genevieve cried in Adrian's library that afternoon.
Not because the mystery remained.
Because it didn't.
For eight months, she had imagined the final answer would give her father back in some emotional way.
Instead, it gave her an ordinary tragedy.
A wet road.
A grieving family.
A man who should have slowed down.
Adrian sat across from her without speaking.
Finally Genevieve said, “He wasn't perfect.”
“No.”
“I wanted him to be.”
“Children usually do.”
She looked at him.
“You sound experienced.”
“I spent fifteen years believing my father had been cheated by yours.”
“And now?”
“Now I know both of them were cheated.”
Genevieve looked at the ring.
“Our families lost twenty years because of other people's lies.”
“Yes.”
“I don't want to lose twenty more.”
Adrian met her eyes.
Neither moved.
Something had been building between them since the moment she entered the club.
But Genevieve was still wearing the emotional wreckage of a wedding she had escaped less than forty-eight hours earlier.
Adrian seemed to understand.
He stood.
“You need sleep.”
She almost laughed.
“Was that romantic tension I just watched you deliberately kill?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you're vulnerable, exhausted, and technically still wearing somebody else's engagement ring.”
Genevieve looked at her left hand.
She had forgotten.
Slowly, she removed Preston's ring.
She placed it on the table.
“There.”
Adrian smiled.
“That solves one of three problems.”
She smiled back.
It was the first genuine smile she had managed since the cathedral.
The legal consequences arrived quickly.
Richard Sloan was charged in connection with fraud, obstruction, conspiracy, and the earlier vehicle-tampering scheme.
Harrison Witmore entered negotiations with federal prosecutors.
He agreed to provide records implicating other participants.
Caleb also cooperated.
Preston was not charged immediately, though investigators examined his role in the forged corporate documents.
Genevieve refused to protect him.
She also refused to exaggerate what he had done.
Evidence before people.
Even when she hated the evidence.
Especially then.
Three days after the wedding that never happened, Genevieve returned to Hayes Logistics.
Employees lined the lobby.
She hated it.
Not them.
The attention.
She walked directly to the elevators.
Natalie joined her.
“You know half the internet thinks you're dead.”
“Wonderful.”
“The other half thinks you ran away with a mysterious stranger.”
Genevieve glanced at her.
Natalie grinned.
“That part is closer.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Yet.”
“Natalie.”
“I'm recovering from being chased out of your apartment. Let me have this.”
Genevieve laughed.
The elevator opened.
Her father's office had been sealed during the investigation.
Now she entered alone.
His chair remained behind the desk.
She did not sit in it.
Not yet.
A folder waited on the desk.
No sender.
Genevieve immediately called security.
Nobody knew who had delivered it.
She put on gloves before opening it.
Inside was a copy of a trust agreement.
THE THOMAS HAYES FAMILY TRUST.
She scanned the pages.
A clause had been highlighted.
Upon Thomas Hayes's death, controlling voting authority passed not directly to Genevieve but to a temporary trustee for twelve months.
The trustee's name had been blacked out.
Genevieve called the company attorney.
“Who is the temporary trustee?”
Silence.
“Martin?”
“Genevieve, where did you get that document?”
“Answer me.”
“The trust was amended shortly before your father's death.”
“Who is the trustee?”
Another pause.
Then Martin said:
“Your mother.”
Genevieve stared through the office windows.
Eleanor controlled Hayes Logistics.
Not Genevieve.
Not Preston.
Not Richard.
Her mother.
Then the office door opened.
Eleanor stood there.
She held another copy of the trust.
And behind her was a man Genevieve had never seen before.
May you like
Eleanor closed the door.
“There's one last thing your father never told you.”
