Chapter 10 - Veronica Was Never the Person Emily Feared Most
The major twist came from Dennis Cole.
He was alive.
Seventy-one.
Living in Arizona.
Through counsel, he agreed to speak.
He admitted Frank hired him to intimidate Emily in 2004.
Not kill her.
Scare her into returning copied financial records.
Dennis followed her.
Emily panicked.
Caleb helped stage her disappearance after the fatal crash created an opportunity.
Years later, Allan hired Dennis again.
Why?
To locate Emily.
By then Allan feared she'd expose his role in falsifying identification and moving money for Frank.
But Allan died soon afterward.
Dennis stopped.
Then someone else contacted him.
Veronica.
My stomach dropped.
I looked at her across Thomas's office.
“You hired him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To find Emily.”
“You told me you found her through Allan's storage box.”
“I did. I found a city. Not an address.”
Three earlier clues shifted.
Veronica kept locating Emily because she had hired the same man who originally frightened her.
Emily called her the champagne lady because Veronica appeared whenever Dennis found them.
And Emily's warning about Maisie wasn't because Veronica wanted to kidnap her.
It was because Emily believed Veronica would use Maisie as leverage to force the green folder back.
“Did you threaten to take her child?”
Veronica started crying.
“I told Emily that if she kept moving Maisie around and living under unstable identities, child services could become involved.”
It was legally manipulative, morally cruel, and terrifying to a mother already living in fear.
But there was still one larger revelation.
Dennis said Emily had recently contacted him herself.
Three weeks ago.
She wanted to know who had paid him over the years.
He gave her records.
And after seeing them, Emily told him:
“Now I finally know which lie started everything.”
Not Frank's.
Not Allan's.
Not Veronica's.
Mine.
The lie I told Emily the night she left.
May you like
I had said Frank was more trustworthy than she was.
She spent twenty-two years believing I chose him over her.
