Chapter 5 - The Lie About My Mother
I stepped away from Rachel.
The laundry room suddenly felt too small.
“What instructions?”
Rachel kept her hands visible. “Your mother was being followed. Eleanor told me she was unstable and planning to take you out of the country.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“I disabled her car’s tracking alert.”
My throat tightened.
“What happened after that?”
“She left the mansion alone. Her brakes failed on Ridgeway Road.”
The words seemed to come from a great distance.
My mother’s accident had happened eleven years earlier. Police blamed wet pavement and excessive speed. I had spent years defending her whenever relatives called her reckless.
“You knew the car was unsafe?”
“No. I swear I didn’t.”
“But you helped Eleanor hide where she was going.”
“Yes.”
“Why would Eleanor care?”
Rachel looked toward the blocked door.
“Because your mother had found the blue ledger.”
A slow, violent pressure built behind my ribs.
“My mother knew Eleanor?”
“She knew of her.”
I lifted my phone. “Daniel, are you still recording?”
“Yes.”
“Save everything Rachel says.”
“I’m trying, but the administrator is deleting files as they generate.”
Rachel grabbed my sleeve. “Then we need the physical recorder.”
“Julian has it.”
“He has the decoy.”
I stared at her.
She pointed toward my handbag, still hanging beneath my uninjured arm.
“The device that slid across the kitchen floor wasn’t your recorder.”
I opened the bag.
Beneath the torn lining was a second compartment I had never noticed. Inside it, secured by black elastic, was another device.
Tiny.
No visible light.
“Your grandmother had the bag modified,” Rachel said. “The red light was meant to draw attention.”
My anger sharpened into focus.
The blinking recorder Julian and Eleanor had seized held nothing except a short loop of silence. The actual recording remained hidden against my side.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wasn’t supposed to reveal myself unless Eleanor became violent.”
“She poured hot oil on me.”
“I know.”
“And you were serving dinner twenty feet away.”
Rachel’s face tightened. “Julian sent the staff out before it happened. I came back through the passage when your emergency signal activated.”
“You could have stopped her.”
“I might have made her stop tonight. Your grandmother wanted proof that would expose the entire structure behind her.”
“My grandmother is dead.”
“And your mother is dead,” Rachel replied, tears rising in her eyes. “Because I acted too early once and trusted the wrong person.”
The cabinet scraped behind us.
The service door opened a fraction.
Julian’s voice came through the gap.
“Rachel, tell Clara what the police found in your apartment after her mother died.”
Rachel went rigid.
“What did they find?” I asked.
He laughed softly.
“Copies of her mother’s bank records. Photographs of the car. And fifty thousand dollars in cash.”
Rachel shook her head. “It was planted.”
“Of course it was,” Julian said. “That’s what everyone says.”
The door pushed wider.
Rachel stepped backward, but there was nowhere to go.
I looked at her face and saw something beyond guilt.
Recognition.
She knew Julian had those details because he had seen the original police file.
“What company did you work for eleven years ago?” I asked.
Rachel did not answer.
Julian did.
“Mercer Security.”
My phone remained connected.
Daniel heard every word.
For the first time since he answered my emergency transmission, he did not speak.
I lifted the phone closer.
“Daniel,” I said, “why was Rachel’s employment missing from your records?”
A faint breath came through the speaker.
May you like
Then the call disconnected.
📖 Find out why Daniel cut the call the moment Mercer Security was linked to Clara’s mother’s death in CHAPTER 6. 👇
