Chapter 4 - MY FATHER’S FIRST LIE
My father arrived at the Carter estate just before midnight.
He walked in wearing a dark coat stained with blood that wasn’t his.
Two of his guards had been injured.
One was dead.
My father looked at me first.
Then Ethan.
“You should have called.”
Ethan remained seated.
“You should have told us the truth.”
My father’s jaw tightened.
I stood between them.
“No more games.”
He looked at me.
“Jane.”
“Why was my name on a trust connected to missing Russo money?”
His expression barely changed.
But it changed.
That was enough.
“You knew.”
He turned toward Ethan.
“What did you show her?”
“Enough.”
My father ignored him.
“Jane, some things were done to protect you.”
“Putting twenty-eight million dollars under my name protected me?”
“It was never yours.”
“Then whose was it?”
Silence.
Ethan stood.
“Victor Russo’s?”
My father looked at him.
“No.”
That surprised everyone.
“Then whose?”
My father walked to the bar and poured whiskey.
His hand shook slightly.
I had seen my father survive police raids, funerals, betrayals and wars.
I had never seen his hand shake.
“The money belonged to someone who needed to disappear.”
“Who?”
He drank.
Then said:
“Your mother.”
The room became completely still.
My mother had died when I was fourteen.
Car accident.
That was what I had been told.
I stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
My father looked twenty years older.
“Your mother was born into the Russo family.”
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“No.”
“Her name wasn’t Morrow.”
“Stop.”
“Jane—”
“Her family was from Wisconsin.”
“That was the story.”
I looked at Ethan.
He did not seem surprised enough.
“You knew?”
“No.”
But he suspected something.
I could see it.
My father continued.
“Your mother was Victor Russo’s younger sister.”
I sat down.
The floor felt unstable.
That meant Russo blood ran through me.
The family pushing into our territory.
The men who had just attacked my father.
The people trying to kill me.
They were my mother’s family.
“Why did she leave them?”
My father looked toward the fireplace.
“She discovered things Victor had done.”
“What things?”
“Murders. Payments. Judges. Police. Enough to destroy him.”
“And the money?”
“She took it.”
My breath caught.
“She stole twenty-eight million dollars from her own brother?”
“No.”
My father shook his head.
“She took records worth more than twenty-eight million.”
The money was only a diversion.
My mother had created fake accounts.
One was in my name.
Why?
Because Victor would never believe his own niece had been used as cover.
“What happened to the records?”
My father looked at me.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
His face broke slightly.
“I lost them the night your mother died.”
Silence.
Then Ethan asked the question I could not.
“Was it really an accident?”
My father closed his eyes.
And in that moment, I knew.
May you like
My mother had not died because of a wet road.
She had been killed.
