Chapter 9 - The First WifeLydia refused to meet in person.
She said she had spent years hiding.
Watching.
Waiting.
She knew about Derek.
She knew about Eleanor.
And she knew about my grandmother.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Justice.”
“For yourself?”
“For all of us.”
She sent me an address.
An abandoned farmhouse two hours outside the city.
Samantha insisted on coming.
Harold came too.
Derek begged me not to go.
I ignored him.
When we arrived, Lydia was waiting.
She looked nothing like the photograph on the marriage certificate.
Older.
Scarred.
Her left hand trembled.
Her eyes were hard.
She looked at Derek.
“You.”
He froze.
Lydia smiled bitterly.
“You look exactly the same.”
Derek whispered,
“I thought you were dead.”
“You made sure everyone thought that.”
She turned to me.
“You should leave him.”
“I already have.”
“Good.”
Lydia sat down.
Then she told me everything.
Nine years earlier, she had discovered Derek was moving company money.
She threatened to expose him.
Eleanor intervened.
Derek arranged a boating accident.
Lydia survived.
Barely.
She escaped before they could finish the job.
But she couldn't go home.
Because Derek had already declared her dead.
The money transfers I had found were payments Derek had been making to keep her silent.
“You paid him to protect you,” I said.
“No.”
Lydia shook her head.
“I paid myself.”
“What?”
“I sold him pieces of information.”
Derek had been paying her because she knew where the bodies were buried.
Literally.
I stared at her.
“What bodies?”
“Not people.”
“Then what?”
“Companies.”
She smiled.
“Shell companies. Trusts. Offshore accounts. Your husband's empire is a maze of stolen money.”
Samantha asked,
“Do you have proof?”
Lydia reached into a bag.
She pulled out a flash drive.
“Everything.”
Derek stared at it.
“You promised.”
“I promised not to expose you.”
She looked at me.
“I never promised to keep quiet forever.”
Then Lydia turned to me.
“But there's one thing you don't know.”
“What?”
“Your grandmother didn't leave you the company.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“She left you something better.”
“What?”
“Control of the evidence.”
Samantha took the flash drive.
Lydia continued.
“Evelyn knew someone would eventually come after her trust.”
“Eleanor?”
“No.”
“Derek?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Lydia looked toward the window.
“Someone inside your family.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“My family?”
She nodded.
“Someone who has been helping Eleanor from the beginning.”
“Who?”
Lydia's face changed.
She looked directly at me.
“Margaret.”
I couldn't breathe.
“Derek's mother?”
“Yes.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does.”
Lydia reached into her bag again.
This time she pulled out a photograph.
It showed Margaret meeting Eleanor twenty years earlier.
They were smiling.
Behind them was my grandmother.
And in the photograph's corner was a child.
A young Derek.
I stared at the image.
“What happened that day?”
Lydia whispered,
“Your grandmother discovered their plan.”
“What plan?”
“To marry you into the Voss family.”
I felt dizzy.
“They planned my marriage before I even met Derek?”
“Yes.”
May you like
Then Lydia said the sentence that destroyed the last piece of my trust.
“Claire, your grandmother didn't die naturally.”
