Chapter 3 - Marina Had Once Worked for My Father, and the Two Girls Had Been Carrying a Secret That Explained Why Someone Wanted Their Mother SilentI sat with Juny and Blythe in the hospital cafeteria.
The girls were eating pancakes.
I had ordered everything on the menu.
Blythe looked at me.
“Do you own all this food?”
I laughed.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would be ridiculous.”
She thought about it.
“You own lots of houses.”
“Yes.”
“Then why not food?”
“Good question.”
Juny smiled.
For a few minutes, they were simply children.
Then I asked about their mother.
“What did she do before she became a cleaner?”
Juny shrugged.
“She worked in a big office.”
Blythe corrected her.
“Daddy's office.”
The air changed.
I stared.
“Your father?”
“Our dad,” Juny said.
I didn't know they had a father.
I asked carefully.
“Where is he?”
The girls looked at one another.
“Mom says he's gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Dead.”
I looked at the records.
Marina's husband had died six years earlier.
His name was Daniel Alvarez.
He had worked for Waverly Urban Group.
I searched.
Daniel had been a junior accountant.
Then I found his final report.
He had discovered irregularities in the company's relocation payments.
He had reported them.
Three months later, he died in a car accident.
I stared at the date.
Six years ago.
Marina's resignation happened one month after.
She had taken the girls and disappeared from Waverly.
I understood.
Her husband had discovered the fraud.
Marina had inherited the knowledge.
She had been silenced financially.
Her apartment removed.
Her job gone.
Then the money was stolen.
And somehow, my signature had been used.
I went back to her bedside.
I held her hand.
“I'm sorry.”
Her eyes remained closed.
Then her fingers moved.
I froze.
“Marina?”
Nothing.
I leaned closer.
Her lips moved.
A whisper.
“Blue.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Blue.”
Her eyes opened slightly.
Then closed.
She wasn't fully conscious.
I waited.
“Blue what?”
Her hand tightened.
“Room.”
Then she went still again.
I looked toward the girls.
“What blue room?”
Juny stared at me.
“Mommy's room.”
“At home?”
“Yes.”
“Which room?”
“The one with the blue door.”
I asked the hospital social worker where Marina had lived before Waverly Court.
They gave me the address.
It was a small apartment.
The building was abandoned now.
We went that evening.
Inside, everything had been cleared.
Except one room.
A blue door.
I opened it.
Empty.
Then I saw a loose floorboard.
Beneath it was a metal box.
Inside were documents.
Daniel's financial notes.
Photographs.
USB drives.
A newspaper clipping.
And a letter.
If anything happens to me, Marina knows the truth.
I felt sick.
The next page:
Waverly's relocation program is not a relocation program. It is an acquisition scheme.
Families were being deliberately displaced.
Their properties were being acquired at artificially low values.
Then resold.
Money flowed through fake foundations.
The beneficiaries were shell companies.
But the final page was worse.
The ultimate beneficiary is Beacon Hollow Holdings.
I recognized the name.
It was the company that owned my family estate.
My own home.
I stared at the documents.
The entire operation led back to me.
Or appeared to.
Someone had designed it that way.
Then I found one more photograph.
My father.
Daniel.
And a third man.
The man from Juny's description.
Mr. Gray.
Thomas Gray.
I knew him.
He had been my father's assistant.
And when my father died, he became Jonathan Wren's chief associate.
The same man now missing.
I called Marco.
“Find Thomas Gray.”
“We're trying.”
“Find him first.”
“Understood.”
I looked at the blue room.
Someone had hidden the truth here.
But Marina hadn't been trying to expose the company.
She'd been protecting the girls.
The question was:
Why had someone been willing to destroy an entire family's life just to keep those documents buried?
The answer came from the letter's final line.
Because the children inherited something their mother never knew she possessed.
I stared at the words.
Juny and Blythe.
May you like
Five years old.
What could they possibly have inherited?
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