Chapter 4 - THE WOMEN ARTHUR ERASED
The hidden room contained more than financial evidence.
It contained lives Arthur had been preparing to rewrite.
Four locked drawers carried women’s names.
Brooke.
Mine.
Sienna’s.
And a fourth woman named Rebecca Cole.
Rebecca had worked as an accountant for one of Arthur’s previous companies.
She disappeared six years earlier.
Arthur told employees she stole money and fled overseas.
No charges were ever filed.
Her drawer contained photographs of her apartment.
Copies of her emails.
A medical report describing her as paranoid.
And a life insurance policy worth three million dollars.
Arthur was the beneficiary.
Investigators reopened her missing-person case.
The photographs in my drawer had been taken without my knowledge.
Me entering hospitals.
Meeting attorneys.
Walking from work.
One image showed me asleep beside an open window.
Arthur had been monitoring me while we were engaged.
My file also included prepared statements claiming I suffered from emotional instability after surgery.
The forged share transfer was only one part of his plan.
He intended to discredit me if I challenged him.
Sienna’s drawer was newer.
It held a prenuptial agreement she had never seen.
The agreement transferred her future company shares to a trust controlled by Arthur.
It also contained a medical proxy giving him authority if she became incapacitated.
Her signature appeared on both.
Sienna stared at the documents inside the investigator’s office.
“I did not sign these.”
Arthur had planned to steal from her too.
The woman who believed she had defeated me had only stepped into the place I escaped.
Brooke’s drawer contained custody documents.
Arthur planned to claim their son was not biologically his if Brooke pursued support.
A private laboratory had already prepared a false DNA report.
The investigators arrested the laboratory director.
He admitted Arthur paid for several fabricated tests.
Then Rebecca’s old storage unit was located.
Inside was a handwritten journal.
She had discovered Arthur using construction projects to launder money.
She planned to report him.
Her final entry read.
Arthur says nobody believes difficult women.
If something happens, look at Lake Mercer.
Search teams went to the lake.
Near an abandoned development owned by one of Arthur’s companies, cadaver dogs alerted beside a concrete foundation.
Human remains were recovered the following morning.
Dental records confirmed Rebecca’s identity.
The financial case became a murder investigation.
Arthur requested an attorney and stopped cooperating.
My father did the opposite.
He offered to testify about the forged shares in exchange for leniency.
He claimed Arthur manipulated him.
The investigators showed him the office recording.
Dad had not sounded manipulated.
He sounded eager.
He admitted forging my signature.
He admitted using my surgery to explain the transfer.
Then he admitted something I had never suspected.
My mother knew.
She had provided samples of my handwriting.
Mother denied it.
A warrant was issued for our parents’ home.
Police found practice signatures inside her desk.
They also found insurance policies on both Sienna and me.
The beneficiaries were our parents.
Sienna called me from the investigators’ office.
“Did you know about the insurance?”
“No.”
“Why would they do this?”
“Money.”
“They are our parents.”
“That stopped protecting us a long time ago.”
She began to cry.
For the first time, she was not crying over the wedding.
She was crying because the family story we had both been taught was collapsing.
Then the investigator returned with another discovery.
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Rebecca had been pregnant when she died.
Records showed Arthur was the father.
