Chapter 7 - WHAT VANESSA DID AFTER THE DIVORCE
Vanessa did not deny it.
We confronted her at dawn.
She looked at the file once and sat down.
“I wondered if those still existed.”
My anger rose.
“You knew Kane was watching me.”
“Eventually.”
“When?”
“Eight months after you left Chicago.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I couldn’t reach you without telling Kane where you were.”
“He already knew where I was.”
“I didn’t know that at first.”
Adrian’s voice hardened.
“What did you do?”
Vanessa explained.
Kane approached her after my divorce.
He wanted reassurance that Adrian would not go looking for me.
Vanessa believed Kane was acting for Malcolm.
Then she overheard him discussing a “permanent solution.”
She realized the divorce had never been enough.
“So I told him if Evelyn died, Adrian would tear apart everyone responsible.”
“That stopped him?”
“At first.”
Then came money.
Vanessa paid people inside Kane’s surveillance network.
Changed schedules.
Created false travel trails.
Three times, she learned of plans targeting me.
Three times, she redirected them.
“Why?” I asked.
Her eyes met mine.
“Because helping destroy your marriage was already the worst thing I had ever done.”
That did not make her innocent.
But it made the story messier.
Human.
“I thought Adrian still loved me,” she continued.
“He did.”
Adrian did not flinch.
Vanessa nodded.
“He loved the version of me he remembered.”
Then she looked at him.
“And I loved winning more than I loved you.”
Adrian’s expression changed.
Maybe that hurt.
Maybe it relieved him.
Both could be true.
I asked:
“Did you know I had children?”
“Not until three weeks ago.”
“Why not tell Adrian immediately?”
“Because I didn’t know whose children they were.”
Fair.
Then she added:
“Once I did, I tried to contact you first.”
I frowned.
“When?”
She showed me an email address I had stopped using four years earlier.
Three messages.
Evelyn, please call me.
Your children may be in danger.
I am not asking you to trust me.
My stomach twisted.
Another missed warning.
Then Daniel entered.
“We have movement.”
Kane had accessed an account in Indiana.
A private airstrip.
Adrian stood.
“He’s leaving.”
“No,” Caleb said from the doorway.
He was pale but upright.
“He wants us to think he’s leaving.”
Everyone turned.
“Kane never runs without leverage.”
“What leverage?” I asked.
Caleb held up a recovered text.
A scheduled message Kane had drafted but never sent.
It read:
IF MERCER WON’T SIGN, TAKE THE GIRL.
I stopped breathing.
Emma.
Adrian was already moving.
I grabbed his arm.
“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“You don’t know that.”
He called the penthouse security team.
No answer.
Daniel called another line.
Nothing.
We ran.
The penthouse doors were open when we arrived.
One guard unconscious.
Another missing.
Ethan stood in the hallway crying.
I grabbed him.
“Where’s Emma?”
His face crumpled.
“A lady took her.”
Adrian froze.
“What lady?”
Ethan pointed toward the elevator.
“She said Grandma sent her.”
My mother was in Boston.
Nobody in Chicago should have known that.
Then Ethan held out something.
A gold bracelet.
Vanessa saw it and went pale.
“That belongs to my sister.”
I stared.
“You have a sister?”
Vanessa whispered:
“Had.”
Her sister Claire Hale had supposedly died twelve years earlier.
But the elevator security footage showed a woman with Vanessa’s face taking Emma by the hand.
May you like
Claire Hale was alive.
And she was working with Robert Kane.
