Chapter 2: The Velvet Box
By the time the cemetery dirt was packed over Emma’s grave, the locks on the sprawling Vale estate had already been changed.
I stood in the center of the grand foyer, surrounded by Emma’s things. The scent of her vanilla perfume still lingered in the air. The pain in my chest was a living, breathing thing, a physical agony that threatened to drop me to my knees. But I could not fall. Emma had given me a weapon, and I was going to wield it.
I walked up the grand staircase to the master bedroom, going straight to the hidden wall safe behind a portrait of the two of them. I entered the combination Emma had sent me in a scheduled email that arrived hours after her death.
Inside was a stack of flash drives, a thick ledger, and a small, black velvet box.
I opened the box. Inside was a single, tarnished silver coin. A replica of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver, accompanied by a small, handwritten note in Emma’s beautiful, looping script: For the man who sold his family for a cheap thrill. The drives contain the rest.
I plugged the first flash drive into Emma’s laptop. For the next six hours, I did not cry. I simply read.
Emma knew everything. She knew about Celeste. But more devastatingly, she had uncovered Evan’s massive corporate fraud. He had been using the company’s charitable arm to launder money to a private offshore account—an account he planned to use to run away with Celeste after forcing Emma out of the company.
But there was something else. A file titled The Brake Lines.
My blood ran cold. Emma’s death had been ruled a tragic accident. Her brakes had failed on the steep canyon road near the estate. She had crashed through the guardrail. The police said it was a mechanical failure on an older vintage car she loved to drive.
But Emma’s file contained an audio recording. It was a hidden dashcam file she had managed to back up to the cloud before the crash. I clicked play. I heard the sound of the garage, the heavy breathing of a man, and the distinct, metallic snip of heavy wire cutters.
"Let's see how well you drive now, you arrogant bitch," Evan’s voice muttered on the tape.
He had murdered my daughter. He had murdered my unborn grandson.
I closed the laptop. The storm that had been brewing inside me since the church finally broke, but it was not a storm of tears. It was a storm of absolute, terrifying clarity. I was not going to simply bankrupt Evan Vale. I was going to bury him.
The sound of pounding on the front door echoed through the house. I walked out to the balcony overlooking the driveway. Down below, in the pouring rain, stood Evan and Celeste. Their bags had been tossed unceremoniously onto the wet gravel by the security team I had just hired.
"Margaret!" Evan screamed, his designer suit plastered to his body. "Let me in! This is my house!"
"This is my property, Evan," I called down, my voice slicing through the rain. "If you do not leave immediately, the police will arrest you for trespassing. Though, I imagine they will be arresting you for much worse very soon."
Celeste looked up at me, her hair ruined, her makeup running down her face in dark, ugly streaks. "You can't do this!" she shrieked. "He’s a powerful man!"
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"He is nothing," I said coldly. "And you, Celeste, won exactly what you asked for. You won Evan. Enjoy him."
I turned my back on them and walked inside, leaving them in the storm.
