Chapter 17 - Her Mother's Last Letter|
Sophia read the signature again and again.
It was her mother's handwriting. The long curve of the H, the small loop in the B, the way the final letters slanted downward.
No one had forged it.
Her mother had signed the document.
Declan sat beside her while she struggled to understand what it meant.
“Maybe she didn't know what the company would be used for,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“Or perhaps someone forced her.”
“Maybe.”
She set the paper down.
“I'm tired of maybe.”
He didn't argue.
The investigators discovered that Helen Bennett had opened the company account under instructions from a financial adviser who later worked for Victor Sloane. The account was active for less than a year, then went dormant. It had been reactivated shortly before the shooting, using the same company registration.
Helen had died of a sudden illness when Sophia was sixteen. The records did not suggest foul play, but they raised questions about what she had known before her death.
Sophia went to her grandmother's old house, now owned by another family, with permission from the current residents to retrieve a box of family photographs that had been stored in the attic. She took Declan with her, along with a police liaison who documented the visit.
The box contained school pictures, birthday cards, and a small envelope marked For Sophia, when she's ready.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Inside was a letter.
My sweet girl,
If you ever discover that my name appears beside people you don't trust, please understand that I was trying to protect you. I made a mistake when I believed I could help expose them from the inside.
I worked with a small group that investigated fraudulent accounts. We found that money was being moved through companies created in the names of ordinary people. I helped establish one of those companies because I believed it would be used to document the transfers and preserve evidence.
I learned too late that the people directing the scheme had another purpose. They wanted to control the accounts, conceal their own involvement, and create false trails that would lead investigators away from them.
I withdrew, but I kept copies of the records. If anything happens to me, don't trust anyone who tells you that silence is the same thing as safety.
You deserve a life that belongs to you.
Sophia pressed the letter to her chest.
Her mother had not been part of the scheme willingly. She had tried to expose it and had left evidence behind.
But the letter contained no explanation for why the company had been reactivated seven years later—or why it had been used to purchase the car involved in the shooting.
A second page had been folded inside the envelope.
It listed three names.
Victor Sloane.
Raymond Kessler.
Adrian Moretti.
Beside the names was a fourth entry written in pencil.
The fourth person is the one you will never suspect.
Sophia looked at Declan.
“Who could that mean?”
He studied the list.
“Someone who has access to all of them.”
“Someone inside the company?”
“Possibly.”
The police examined the letter and compared it with the other evidence. They confirmed that it appeared to be written by Helen, but they could not establish when the second page had been added.
Sophia felt a sudden memory stir.
When she was a child, her mother used to bring home fabric samples from work. She would spread them across the kitchen table and ask Sophia to identify which pieces matched.
“Look at the edges,” she would say. “The truth is often in the part people ignore.”
Sophia looked down at the letter.
The paper had been cut unevenly along one side.
She turned it over.
A faint impression showed through the fibers, as if another page had once been written on top of it.
Sophia angled it beneath a lamp.
Words emerged, pressed into the paper by a pen.
The fourth person is not a member of the family.
Below that was a final line.
May you like
Ask the man who cried at the hospital.
Sophia slowly turned toward Declan.
