Chapter 8 - What Derek Had Been Hiding From His Mother
I finally answered Derek's call at 8:02 a.m.
"Where did you get the warehouse video?"
No hello.
No apology.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then:
"My father's storage box."
"When?"
"Six months ago."
I gripped the phone.
"You knew about this for six months?"
"I knew there was a video."
"You watched it."
"Yes."
"And then proposed to me."
Silence.
That hurt more than I wanted it to.
"Why?"
"Because by then I loved you."
I laughed.
"Don't use that word."
"Claire—"
"You found footage connecting my father to your father's death and kept dating me."
"Because the footage didn't prove your father killed him."
"But you hid it."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because my mother didn't know I had it."
That stopped me.
Derek explained that after his father died, Patricia kept boxes of records in a rented storage unit.
Six months earlier, she asked Derek to clear it before renewal.
He found the flash drive inside a sealed folder.
Alongside it were photographs of me.
Not recent photographs.
Older ones.
College.
Graduate school.
My first day at Mercer Biomedical.
Patricia had been tracking me years before she introduced us.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I confronted her."
"What did she say?"
"That she was protecting me."
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
"From what?"
"She said your family murdered my father."
I looked at Dad.
He heard every word from across the suite.
"What did you believe?"
Derek breathed slowly.
"I didn't know."
"So you stayed with me while deciding whether my father killed yours?"
"At first."
My stomach twisted.
"And later?"
"Later, I stopped caring who our parents hated."
"How romantic."
"I know how it sounds."
"No, Derek. I don't think you do."
He went quiet.
Then:
"I also started investigating my mother."
That surprised me.
He had hired a private forensic accountant.
He learned Patricia had been moving money into shell companies tied to Colin.
He discovered the alternate prenup.
The vehicle photograph appeared in his desk three weeks ago.
He believed Patricia planted it deliberately.
"Why?"
"To scare me."
"Into what?"
"Keeping you compliant until Monday."
I felt fury rise.
"You still went through with the wedding."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Another silence.
This one longer.
Finally:
"Because I thought I could take control of CD Marital Holdings before she did."
I almost dropped the phone.
"You were going to steal the stolen company from your mother?"
"I was going to stop the takeover."
"Without telling me."
"Yes."
"By taking control yourself."
"Temporarily."
I laughed so hard it hurt.
"Derek, do you hear yourself?"
"I do now."
"No. You still think the problem is that your plan failed."
He didn't answer.
I continued.
"You and your mother have the same disease. You both believe controlling someone is acceptable if you tell yourself it's for the right reason."
He inhaled sharply.
"You're right."
That shut me up.
Derek had never said that easily.
He always explained.
Defended.
Reframed.
Now he simply repeated:
"You're right."
Then he gave me the password to every file he had collected.
No conditions.
No bargaining.
Before hanging up, he said:
"There's one file you need to open first."
"What file?"
"Folder marked R.H."
Robert Hale.
Inside Derek's cloud archive, Lena found it.
There were medical records from the night Robert died.
The official cause was cardiac arrest.
But one lab report showed something strange.
A sedative in his bloodstream.
A drug Robert had never been prescribed.
And attached to the report was an email Derek had recovered from Patricia's old account.
Sent to Thomas Reed less than an hour after Robert died.
It contained four words.
It's done. He can't talk.
I stared at the screen.
Patricia hadn't been avenging her husband's death.
May you like
She had known exactly how he died.
And Thomas Reed had known too.
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