Chapter 11 - THE WOMAN WHO CHOSE SILENCE|
Jenna refused to speak during the drive back to the city.
She sat beside me, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Every few minutes, she looked at her phone as if she expected her mother to call and explain that the entire world had misunderstood her.
I wanted to tell her Richard was lying.
I couldn't.
The documents showed that money had passed through accounts connected to her mother's name. Whether she had understood what she was signing was another question.
When we arrived at the tower, Jenna went straight to the guest suite and closed the door.
I stood outside for several minutes.
Then I knocked.
"Jenna?"
"Go away."
I leaned against the wall.
"I can do that."
Silence.
"But I'm not leaving you alone with this unless you ask me to."
The door opened a few inches.
Her eyes were red.
"What if he was telling the truth?"
"Then we'll find out."
"What if my mother helped them kill your father?"
I didn't answer immediately.
"Then she will have to face what she did."
Jenna looked down.
"She's still my mother."
"I know."
"And I hate that part of me wants to defend her."
"That doesn't make you weak."
She opened the door.
"I don't know how to feel about anything."
I reached for her hand.
"You don't have to decide tonight."
She let me hold it.
We spent the next hour reviewing the evidence with Marcus. He had recovered a set of financial statements from the warehouse, and one detail stood out: a payment had been made to a law firm the day after Thomas Hart's death.
The firm was still operating.
Its senior partner was a retired judge named Leonard Pike.
I knew the name.
Pike had overseen the investigation into my father's murder. He had ruled that the warehouse fire was accidental and dismissed evidence suggesting foul play.
He had also signed the paperwork declaring Richard dead.
"Someone paid him to close the case," I said.
Marcus nodded.
"And the payment came from an account under Eleanor Hart's name."
Jenna stared at the screen.
"My mother."
"Yes."
"Could Ryan have forged it?"
"Possibly," I said. "We need proof."
She rose abruptly.
"I'm going to see her."
"Not alone."
"I didn't say I was going alone."
We arranged a meeting at a neutral location with security nearby. Eleanor arrived wearing the same coat she had worn when we left her house. She looked as though she hadn't slept.
Jenna placed the bank statement on the table.
"Did you pay Leonard Pike?"
Her mother began to cry.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he told me it was the only way to keep you safe."
"From whom?"
"Voss."
Jenna's expression hardened.
"You knew he killed Dad?"
"I knew he was involved. I didn't know everything."
"That's convenient."
Eleanor flinched.
"He threatened you and Matt. He showed me photographs of you leaving school. He said if I spoke, you'd be next."
"So you stayed silent for eleven years?"
"I was trying to keep you alive!"
Jenna stood.
"You kept me ignorant."
Her mother reached for her.
Jenna stepped back.
Then Eleanor said the one thing that made me reconsider everything.
"Thomas didn't steal the ledger. He gave it to me before he died."
She opened her purse and removed a small key.
"I hid it where Voss would never think to look."
"Where?" I asked.
Eleanor looked at Jenna.
"In the place where your father first taught you to read."
Jenna went completely still.
The old public library.
May you like
The children's reading room.
And somewhere inside it, the evidence that could bring down an empire.
