Chapter 6 - THE AUNT WHO NEVER LEFTDaphne pointed the gun at Annie first.
“Put the letter down.”
Annie complied.
Jonathan stepped forward.
“Daphne.”
“Don’t.”
His sister’s hand trembled.
That frightened Annie more than a steady grip would have.
Desperate people made mistakes.
“Whatever money you took,” Jonathan said, “we can handle it.”
Daphne laughed.
“You still think this is about money?”
“You moved twenty-eight million dollars.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew this day might come.”
Victoria stared at the woman she once trusted more than anyone.
“You killed my mother.”
Daphne looked at her.
Something almost maternal appeared in her expression.
“Your mother was going to destroy everything.”
“She discovered you were stealing.”
“She discovered I was keeping the company alive.”
Jonathan’s face hardened.
“By stealing?”
“Father left you everything that mattered.”
Daphne’s voice sharpened.
“The company. The voting shares. The houses. I got ceremonial titles and instructions to support my brilliant older brother.”
“You were a board member.”
“I was an ornament.”
Daphne looked at Victoria.
“Elena understood power. That’s why we hated each other.”
“You poisoned her.”
“I made her unstable.”
Jonathan recoiled.
Daphne continued almost casually.
“Small doses. Enough to make people question her judgment.”
Victoria’s face twisted.
“Why?”
“Because she was preparing to expose the accounts.”
“So you pushed her?”
Daphne’s expression changed.
“I did not plan that.”
“Stop.”
“We argued.”
“STOP.”
“She grabbed me.”
“You’re lying.”
“She said she was going to the police. I tried to stop her. She pulled away.”
Victoria’s voice became very small.
“And she fell?”
Daphne hesitated.
That hesitation answered everything.
“You pushed her.”
Daphne’s eyes hardened.
“Yes.”
Jonathan closed his eyes.
Victoria swayed.
Annie moved closer to her.
Daphne noticed.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“You.”
Daphne studied Annie.
“Ruth’s daughter becoming Victoria’s protector. Your mother would appreciate the irony.”
“Leave my mother out of your mouth.”
For the first time, Annie’s voice carried open fury.
Daphne smiled.
“There she is.”
Annie stepped forward.
The gun swung toward her.
Jonathan shouted, “Annie!”
She stopped.
Daphne said, “Ruth was exactly like you. Always believing courage and morality were the same thing.”
“She was right.”
“She died terrified.”
Annie’s blood went cold.
“Did you kill her?”
Daphne smiled faintly.
“No.”
Annie stared.
Daphne continued.
“Cancer did that.”
Annie’s shoulders loosened slightly.
Her mother’s heart attack had apparently been another incomplete story, but Daphne clarified.
“By the time I found Ruth again, she was already sick.”
Annie frowned.
“My mother never had cancer.”
“She did.”
“No.”
“She hid it from you.”
Annie wanted to reject it.
Then remembered her mother’s weight loss.
The fatigue.
The unexplained appointments during her final year.
Ruth had claimed heart trouble.
Another secret intended as protection.
Daphne laughed softly.
“Everyone lied to protect you, Annie. Your mother. Jonathan. Claire. Yet somehow I’m the monster because my lies worked better.”
“You’re the monster because your lies were weapons.”
Annie’s response was immediate.
Daphne’s smile disappeared.
Victoria looked at her aunt.
“Why the letters?”
Daphne’s gun lowered by an inch.
“I needed you close.”
“Why?”
“You owned your mother’s shares.”
Jonathan looked up sharply.
When Elena died, her fifteen percent transferred into a trust for Victoria.
Daphne needed control of Victoria to influence those votes.
The cruelty had another purpose.
“Happy people build lives,” Daphne said. “They marry. They make friends. They bring outsiders close.”
Victoria’s face went pale.
“So you made me afraid of people.”
“I made you cautious.”
“You made me alone.”
“I stayed.”
The old argument.
But this time Victoria heard it differently.
Daphne had not stayed because she loved more deeply than everyone else.
She had driven everyone else away so her presence looked like devotion.
“You made yourself my only safe person.”
Daphne’s eyes flickered.
Victoria finally understood.
Every maid fired.
Every friendship distrusted.
Every boyfriend interrogated.
Every assistant accused.
Daphne had reinforced each episode.
“You’d say, ‘See? They always leave.’”
Daphne said nothing.
Victoria cried.
“But you made them leave.”
Still nothing.
Nathan subtly moved toward the hallway.
Daphne saw him.
“Don’t.”
He froze.
Then Annie heard a faint sound.
The room’s electronic lock.
Someone outside.
Hotel security?
Federal agents?
Daphne heard it too.
She turned her head.
That half second was enough.
Victoria moved.
Not toward safety.
Toward Daphne.
She slapped the gun sideways.
A shot exploded.
Glass shattered.
Jonathan tackled his sister.
Annie pulled Victoria down.
Nathan kicked the gun under a couch.
Security burst in.
Three guards restrained Daphne.
For several seconds, nobody understood what had happened.
Then Annie felt warmth on her hand.
Blood.
Victoria looked down.
Her shoulder.
The bullet had grazed her.
“Victoria!”
“I’m okay.”
She wasn’t.
But she was conscious.
Paramedics arrived.
Police filled the suite.
Daphne screamed as officers handcuffed her.
“You ungrateful little fool!”
Victoria stopped.
Everyone expected her to scream back.
She didn’t.
She looked at Daphne with tears in her eyes.
“You were right about one thing.”
Daphne stared.
“People leave.”
Victoria swallowed.
“But sometimes they leave because staying with you is killing them.”
Then she turned away.
At the hospital, Victoria received twelve stitches.
No major damage.
Jonathan sat outside her room looking twenty years older.
Annie joined him.
He stared at the floor.
“I failed both of them.”
Annie knew he meant Elena and Victoria.
“Yes.”
Jonathan looked surprised.
Most employees would reassure a billionaire.
Annie wasn’t interested.
“You did.”
His eyes filled.
“You could soften it.”
“Would that help?”
“No.”
“Then why would I?”
He laughed weakly.
“I understand why Victoria likes you.”
“I’m not sure Victoria likes me.”
“She does.”
Annie sat beside him.
Jonathan rubbed his face.
“I thought providing meant loving.”
“Providing is part of loving.”
“It was the only part I was good at.”
“Then learn another part.”
He looked at her.
“I’m sixty-three.”
“So?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Neither does your daughter.”
Jonathan looked through the glass.
Victoria lay asleep.
“Maybe you can learn together.”
The following morning, Victoria woke and asked for Margaret.
The elderly housekeeper entered cautiously.
Victoria’s face crumpled.
“Mrs. Ellis.”
Margaret waited.
Victoria struggled for words.
“I humiliated you.”
“Yes.”
“I hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“I have done that before.”
“Yes.”
Victoria almost smiled through tears.
Annie had apparently inspired Margaret’s new commitment to bluntness.
“I’m sorry.”
Margaret looked at her for a long time.
Then Victoria added, “I don’t expect that to fix it.”
Margaret nodded.
“Good.”
“I want to pay for your retirement.”
Margaret’s expression changed.
“That would be kind.”
“But that isn’t why I’m apologizing.”
“Better.”
Victoria inhaled.
“I’m sorry because you deserved respect before I knew any of this.”
Margaret’s eyes filled.
She moved toward the bed.
For one moment Victoria seemed afraid Margaret might hug her.
Then Margaret did.
Victoria stiffened.
Then slowly lifted both arms.
She held on.
Annie watched from the doorway.
This was not redemption.
Not yet.
One apology could not erase years.
But it was movement.
Two days later, Martin Vale returned Jonathan’s call.
He remembered the Ashford incident.
He also remembered something else.
The backup tape had not been destroyed.
Ruth Carter had collected it three weeks after Elena’s death.
Annie frowned.
“Then where did she put it?”
Martin answered.
“She said she was putting it somewhere nobody in the Ashford family would ever think to look.”
“Where?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
The trail seemed dead.
Until Annie remembered one sentence her mother used to repeat when Annie was young.
Never hide something where the thief is afraid to go.
Hide it where the thief believes he owns everything.
Annie looked at Victoria.
“The Ashfords own hotels.”
“Yes.”
“Your family thinks in mansions and boardrooms.”
“Yes.”
“My mother didn’t.”
“What did she think in?”
Annie smiled.
May you like
“Church basements.”
And suddenly she knew exactly where to look.
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