She wore the red coat, buttoned all the way up.
Her dark hair was pulled tightly back.
She looked at me with Dad’s eyes and Mom’s cheekbones.
“Emily,” she said.
“Claire.”
She gestured toward the chair opposite her.
“Sit.”
I remained standing.
“You wanted to tell me why Daniel married me.”
Claire smiled.
Thin.
Practiced.
“He married you because I told him to.”
Daniel tensed but said nothing.
“That old story,” I said.
“Is it old?” Claire leaned forward. “Because he didn’t fall in love with you. He never loved you. He loved the idea of having the key to Hayes Capital.”
I looked at Daniel.
He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“And you?” I asked Claire.
“I loved the idea of watching you walk into a room and believe you owned it. When all along, you were holding something that belonged to me.”
“Belonged to you?”
“My father’s money built this company.”
The room seemed to freeze.
“Your father was a witness.”
“My father was the whistleblower who exposed a network of corruption. And Richard Hayes took the evidence, buried it, and rebuilt his reputation on top of it.”
Pressure built behind my temples.
“That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it? Ask him.”
Dad wasn’t there.
I had left him sitting at the kitchen table, pale and silent.
But his silence had already answered more than I wanted to know.
“He used those funds to create Hayes Capital,” Claire continued. “He told everyone it was family money. It was not. It was evidence money. Tainted money. My father’s blood money.”
“If that were true, regulators would have discovered it years ago.”
