Chapter 7: What His Father Had Buried
His father's house smelled the same as it always had — woodsmoke and old books and something faintly like the soap his mother had used before she died.
Daniel stood in the hallway and felt twelve years old and fifty-one years old at the same time.
His father, Robert, was in the sitting room.
He didn't stand when Daniel came in.
He was in the armchair by the fire, a glass of water on the table beside him, and he looked smaller than Daniel remembered.
Or perhaps Daniel was just seeing him differently now.
"Sit down," Robert said.
Daniel sat.
"How is Claire?"
"She's home.
She's with Lily." Daniel had brought them back that afternoon — Claire moving slowly, Lily holding her hand with both of hers, not letting go even to open the front door.
"She's going to be all right."
"Good." Robert nodded.
"That's good."
"Dad." Daniel leaned forward.
"Tell me about Vanessa."
Robert looked at the fire.
"She came to me twelve years ago," he said.
"She was working for a firm I had a dispute with.
A long dispute.
Over a piece of land your grandfather left that I believed had been misappropriated in a contract I signed without reading carefully enough." He paused.
"Vanessa had access to the other firm's internal files.
She offered to help me.
In exchange for a position in my company and a percentage of whatever I recovered."
"And you agreed."
"I was angry.
And I was not thinking clearly.
Your mother had just been diagnosed." He stopped.
"I'm not offering that as an excuse.
I'm telling you the context."
"What did she get?"
"The dispute was settled.
I recovered the land.
Vanessa received her percentage — a significant amount — and her position." Robert turned from the fire to look at his son.
"What I did not know, until much later, was that she had also kept copies of everything.
Every document from that dispute.
Including some that showed me in a very unflattering light."
"She had leverage over you."
"Yes."
"And when you retired and handed the business to me—"
"She told me she wanted to stay on.
She said she would be an asset to you.
I believed her." His father's voice was steady but his hands, Daniel noticed, were not.
"And I told myself that the arrangement was finished.
That it was old business.
That she had what she wanted and would move on."
"She didn't move on."
"No."
"She started taking money nine days after you signed the business to me.
She's taken a significant amount over seven years, routed through shell companies.
And she used Claire's signature on at least some of the transfers."
Robert closed his eyes.
"She told me," he said quietly, "two years ago, that she had the business well in hand.
That you were doing well.
I had no reason to—" He stopped.
"No.
That's not honest.
I had reasons to look more carefully and I chose not to.
Because looking carefully would have meant admitting what I had agreed to twelve years ago."
The fire crackled.
"She threatened Claire," Daniel said.
"She locked her in a room in my house for six weeks.
My daughter thought her mother had abandoned her."
Robert said nothing.
But his face did something that Daniel had never seen his father's face do before.
"I need the documents," Daniel said.
"The ones from twelve years ago.
The ones that show your arrangement with her.
I need everything."
"If I give you those, it exposes me as well."
"I know."
"It could damage the company.
Your reputation by association."
"I know that too."
Robert looked at his son for a long moment.
Then he reached into the drawer of the table beside his chair — the movement of a man who had already decided, before Daniel arrived, what he was going to do — and placed a manila envelope on the cushion between them.
"I've had them ready for three days," he said.
"Since the day you called the ambulance.
I saw it on the news.
The address." His voice was very quiet.
"I knew then that it had gone further than I ever allowed myself to imagine."
Daniel picked up the envelope.
"I'm sorry," his father said.
"For all of it.
For what I started and what I failed to stop."
Daniel stood.
"Graham will call you," he said.
"You'll need to give a full statement.
Everything."
"I know."
Daniel walked to the door.
"Daniel."
He stopped.
"She'll fight," his father said.
"She's not going to accept this quietly.
She believes she has more leverage than she does, because she doesn't know what you have.
Be ready for what she does next."
Daniel looked back at his father — small in the armchair, older than he'd ever seemed, the fire throwing shadows across a face that had kept this secret for twelve years.
"I'm ready," Daniel said.
May you like
He wasn't certain that was true.
But he walked out into the cold night with the envelope under his arm, and he didn't look back.
