Chapter 11 - THE BUILDING MY PARENTS COULD NEVER OWN
I did not want the building.
That surprised everyone except Rachel.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Thirty-eight million dollars was enormous.
Even to me.
But Sarah had not spent her final years building a way for me to become richer.
She built a way for people like sixteen-year-old me to have somewhere to go.
I declined any personal claim and requested the property remain inside the restored charitable trust.
Margaret smiled.
“Sarah would approve.”
My parents did not.
Beatrice appeared at my office that evening alone.
No Arthur.
No Chloe.
For the first time in my life, my mother looked old.
“You’re humiliating us.”
I almost laughed.
“Still about you.”
“You could stop this.”
“No.”
“Arthur made mistakes.”
“He tried to put a young woman in the ground.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Do you?”
Her eyes shifted.
There.
I saw it.
“You were in the car.”
Beatrice froze.
I stood.
“Not when Ava was hit.”
She said nothing.
“But afterward.”
Still nothing.
“Tell me.”
My mother sat slowly.
Arthur came home after midnight.
His shirt had blood on it.
The Range Rover’s windshield was cracked.
He told Beatrice Ava had “jumped out.”
Beatrice believed him because believing Arthur was easier than confronting what she already knew.
They drove the vehicle to Connecticut before sunrise.
The body shop had been prepared in advance because Arthur originally intended only to frighten Ava by staging a near miss.
Instead, he hit her.
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”
My voice broke despite everything.
Beatrice stared at the floor.
“He said someone else would find her.”
I could barely look at her.
“You left her there.”
“I wasn’t there when it happened.”
“You helped afterward.”
She started crying.
I felt nothing.
Maybe that was cruel.
Maybe it was healing.
“I need you to help me,” she whispered.
Of course.
Again.
Always help for them.
Never for the people they hurt.
“What do you want?”
“Arthur has accounts I didn’t know about. He’s moving money.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because I think he’s leaving.”
That got my attention.
Daniel confirmed it within an hour.
Arthur had transferred $1.7 million into an overseas account.
A jet reservation had been made under a corporate name.
Departure: Sunday night.
My father planned to abandon Beatrice and Chloe while they carried the scandal.
But the account he used contained something more interesting than escape money.
Years of deposits.
Including payments from companies tied to the identity-theft accounts opened in my name when I was a child.
May you like
Arthur had never stopped profiting from the fraud.
And one of those accounts was still active.
