Chapter 2 - The Secret Inside My Father's Watch
Natalie lived in Queen Anne in an old craftsman house that leaned slightly toward the street as though it had spent a hundred years listening to neighborhood gossip.
When she opened the door and saw me standing beneath the porch light with two suitcases, she did not ask what happened.
She hugged me.
That almost destroyed me.
For the previous week, everyone had asked questions.
Doctors.
Funeral directors.
Attorneys.
Relatives.
Airport employees.
Natalie simply held me.
“You're freezing.”
“I think that's Seattle.”
“It's September.”
“Then your city has problems.”
She laughed.
I cried.
Five minutes later we were sitting on her kitchen floor.
I don't know why.
There were chairs.
Grief does not respect furniture.
I told her everything.
Dad.
The hospital.
Vanessa's photograph.
Ethan laughing.
The medical bills.
The divorce.
Natalie listened.
When I finished, she said, “I'm going to say something inappropriate.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
“I would like to hit your husband with a chair.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It was the first real laugh since Dad died.
“Get in line.”
Natalie gave me the guest room.
The next morning, I called Margaret.
“What did Dad leave?”
“Can you come back to Chicago?”
“No.”
I said it too quickly.
Margaret heard.
“Then I can send part of it.”
“Part?”
“There are documents I won't put in ordinary mail.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is this about Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“Did Dad know something about him?”
“Claire, your father knew the Blackwood family long before you met Ethan.”
I sat down.
“What?”
“Did he never tell you?”
“No.”
Margaret sighed.
“Then we should begin there.”
Joseph Bennett had not always owned a small accounting practice.
Before my mother died, he had spent nearly twenty years working as a financial controller for a shipping company called Great Lakes Meridian.
I knew that.
What I did not know was that fifteen years earlier, Great Lakes Meridian had been quietly purchased by a Blackwood holding company.
Dad had resigned six months later.
“He worked for Ethan's family?”
“For Victor Blackwood.”
The name made my stomach tighten.
Victor was Ethan's uncle.
His father's younger brother.
I had met him perhaps a dozen times.
Elegant.
Silver-haired.
Always smiling.
The kind of man who made compliments sound like threats.
“Why did Dad never tell me?”
“He didn't want it affecting your marriage.”
“That's insane.”
“Your father and Ethan's uncle separated badly.”
“How badly?”
Margaret was silent.
“Margaret.”
“Joseph discovered irregularities.”
“What kind?”
“Money disappearing from legitimate companies. False vendor contracts. Properties transferred between entities for reasons that made no commercial sense.”
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
“Criminal money?”
“Possibly.”
“Dad worked for a Mafia family and forgot to mention that?”
“He worked for a shipping company. By the time he understood who controlled it, he had already been there years.”
That sounded like Dad.
He believed accounting could make even dishonest men behave because numbers eventually demanded answers.
“What did he leave?”
“A sealed file.”
“What's in it?”
“I don't know everything.”
“Everything?”
“Some documents are encoded.”
I laughed bitterly.
“My seventy-one-year-old father left encrypted Mafia accounting records?”
“Your father was better with computers than he let you believe.”
I thought about the man who once called me because he couldn't make his television stop speaking Spanish.
Apparently deception ran in families.
“Why didn't he give this to police?”
“He was afraid.”
“Of Victor?”
“Yes.”
“And Ethan?”
Margaret hesitated.
“No.”
That surprised me.
“Dad hated Ethan.”
“Joseph distrusted Ethan. Different thing.”
“He told me I married a man who frightened half the city.”
“He also told me Ethan was not his uncle.”
I looked through Natalie's kitchen window.
Rain slid down the glass.
“What does that mean?”
“I think Joseph believed there was a distinction between Ethan's organization and Victor's activities.”
That sounded disturbingly like something men in expensive suits said before denying knowledge in court.
“What were his instructions?”
Margaret shuffled papers.
“First, you were to leave Chicago if Joseph died before he could speak with you.”
I stopped.
“He expected to die?”
“He knew he was terminal.”
“No. I mean... suddenly.”
“I don't know.”
My chest tightened.
Dad's death had been medically explained.
Cancer.
Complications.
Internal bleeding.
Nothing suspicious.
I forced myself not to create monsters because I had discovered new shadows.
“Second instruction?”
“You were to take his watch.”
My hand instinctively covered it.
The old silver watch.
“What about it?”
“Look at the back.”
I turned my wrist.
Scratches.
An inscription.
J.B.
Nothing else.
“There's nothing.”
“Remove the leather band.”
“I don't have tools.”
“Natalie will.”
I frowned.
“How do you know Natalie?”
“Your father gave me her name.”
A chill moved through me.
“Before he died?”
“Six weeks ago.”
Dad had been preparing an escape route for me.
And I had known nothing.
Natalie found a tiny screwdriver in a kitchen drawer.
We removed the band.
Underneath the metal connection was a narrow rectangular groove.
Inside it sat a tiny key.
Natalie whispered, “Okay, your father was officially cooler than either of us.”
I couldn't speak.
Margaret gave me an address.
A private vault facility in downtown Seattle.
Dad had rented a box there nine months earlier.
Under my name.
“How did he open something in Seattle?”
“He made a trip you apparently didn't know about.”
I remembered Dad telling me he was visiting an old Army friend in Portland.
I had believed him.
Another secret.
I wanted to be angry.
Mostly I missed him.
Natalie drove me downtown.
The vault manager verified my identification, took the key, and disappeared behind a steel door.
When he returned, he carried a black metal box.
I opened it in a private room.
Inside were three things.
A flash drive.
A sealed envelope.
And a photograph.
I picked up the photograph first.
Dad stood beside a much younger man.
The younger man was unmistakable.
Ethan.
He could not have been older than twenty-five.
They were standing beside shipping containers near Lake Michigan.
I turned it over.
Dad's handwriting.
Ethan is not his uncle. Remember that before you decide what to do.
My hands trembled.
Natalie sat opposite me.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
I opened the envelope.
Dear Claire,
If you are reading this, then I ran out of time.
First, I'm sorry.
There are secrets parents keep because we convince ourselves we're protecting our children. Sometimes protection is just fear wearing a respectable coat.
I should have told you everything before you married Ethan.
I did not because I believed he had become a different man from the boy I knew.
Maybe I was right.
Maybe I was wrong.
You must decide that for yourself.
But before you decide anything about your marriage, you need to understand one thing.
Ethan Blackwood has been paying my medical bills.
He did not do it because you begged him.
He made me a promise years before he ever met you.
I stopped breathing.
Natalie leaned closer.
I continued.
When Ethan was twenty-four, his father died.
The official story was a boating accident.
It was not that simple.
I had evidence that someone inside the Blackwood organization had been stealing from Thomas Blackwood and secretly undermining him.
Ethan found me before Victor could.
I helped him understand the records.
In return, Ethan promised that if I ever needed anything, he would help my family.
Years later, when you introduced him as the man you loved, we both recognized each other.
We agreed not to tell you.
That was a mistake.
I lowered the letter.
“No.”
Natalie whispered, “Claire...”
“My father knew him.”
Not casually.
Not from business gossip.
Knew him.
The first Christmas Ethan met Dad, they had shaken hands as strangers.
I remembered.
Dad's expression had changed for half a second.
Ethan had gone still.
Then they smiled.
I had thought it was tension between an ordinary father and his daughter's wealthy boyfriend.
They had been acting.
I kept reading.
Ethan paid my bills because of that promise.
But Claire, if he ever uses those payments to make you feel trapped, then he has corrupted the reason they were given.
A favor becomes a chain the moment someone uses gratitude as a prison.
My eyes filled.
That was Dad.
Exactly Dad.
The final paragraphs were worse.
The drive contains copies of records I kept fifteen years ago and newer records someone began sending me anonymously this spring.
I believe Victor Blackwood is moving against Ethan.
I also believe the person helping Victor is close enough to Ethan to influence where he goes, what he sees, and which warnings he ignores.
Do not assume Ethan is innocent.
He chose the life he lives.
But do not assume every enemy wearing a Blackwood name is the same man.
Most important:
Do not give Ethan the drive until you know who he trusts.
Not even Ethan knows how deep this goes.
I love you.
Live a life that is yours.
Dad.
I sat motionless.
Natalie whispered, “Claire, what's on the drive?”
“I don't know.”
My phone rang.
Ethan.
I rejected the call.
It rang again.
Rejected.
A message appeared.
I know I don't deserve an answer. Please tell me you're safe.
I stared.
Another message.
I didn't know Joseph died. There is no excuse for why I didn't know.
Then another.
I'm sorry.
Two days earlier, those words might have shattered me.
Now I was staring at a photograph proving my father and husband had known each other for years.
I typed nothing.
Natalie looked toward me.
“You should tell Margaret about the drive.”
“She knows.”
“Ethan?”
“No.”
“Good.”
My phone rang again.
Not Ethan.
Unknown number.
I answered cautiously.
“Mrs. Blackwood?”
“Yes?”
“This is Dr. Aaron Patel from Lakeshore Medical.”
My father's oncologist.
“Doctor?”
“I'm sorry to contact you so soon.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is something wrong?”
“There is something regarding your father's final admission that I believe you should know.”
I gripped the table.
“What?”
“A man came to see him the afternoon before his emergency surgery.”
“Who?”
“We assumed he was family.”
My skin went cold.
“Dad had no other family in Chicago except me.”
Dr. Patel was silent.
“Do you know his name?”
“No.”
“But security has footage.”
I looked at the flash drive.
“Describe him.”
The doctor hesitated.
“Older gentleman. Maybe late sixties. Gray hair. Expensive suit.”
My heart began pounding.
Victor Blackwood was sixty-eight.
May you like
“When did he leave?”
“About forty minutes before your father became acutely ill.”
