Chapter 7 - WHY CALEB MARRIED ME
I left Marcus’s house before I hit him.
Vincent followed.
We sat inside my Honda with the engine off.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Finally, I said, “I met Caleb at a charity dinner.”
“When?”
“Five years ago.”
“What charity?”
I remembered.
Then everything inside me went cold.
“The Teresa Castellano Community Fund.”
Vincent turned slowly.
His mother’s charity.
I laughed once.
It didn’t sound sane.
“So he found me at an event connected to your family.”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
Vincent made three calls.
By sunset, we knew.
My father, Robert Hayes, had spent twenty years working as an auditor for Lawson Development.
I had always believed he handled taxes.
He died when I was twenty-six.
Heart attack.
At least that was what I’d been told.
But Robert Hayes had been the person who first noticed money disappearing through Carlo’s shell companies.
He copied records.
He contacted Sophia.
Then he died six months before Sophia did.
I stared at the report.
“No.”
Vincent sat across from me.
“The medical record says cardiac arrest.”
“My father was healthy.”
“It might still have been natural.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know.”
That answer mattered more than pretending certainty.
The technician recovered another file from Sophia’s drive.
A letter addressed to my father.
Robert,
If we succeed, Carlo goes down. If we fail, keep Amelia away from all of us. She has nothing to do with this.
My hands went numb.
Sophia knew my name.
I had never met her.
My father had.
Vincent read the line twice.
Then looked away.
“What?”
I asked.
“My daughter was trying to protect you before either of us knew you existed.”
That night we returned to the diner.
I sat beneath Sophia’s photograph until closing.
Vincent remained across from me.
No touching.
No orders.
Just presence.
At 2:13 A.M., Rosa called from the kitchen.
She had found something beneath the old register while searching through Teresa Castellano’s papers.
An envelope.
Yellowed with age.
My father’s name was written on it.
Inside was a safe-deposit-box key.
And a note from Vincent’s mother.
ROBERT SAID IF SOPHIA FAILED, GIVE THIS ONLY TO AMELIA HAYES.
Teresa Castellano had died four years ago.
May you like
She had hidden the envelope before I ever began working in her diner.
Which meant my job at Castellano’s might not have been a coincidence either.
