Chapter 16 - THE WOMAN WHO HIRED ME
Helen did not get far.
She had not fled the country.
She was sitting in her sister’s house in Connecticut, terrified.
Her attorney contacted Rebecca before police did.
“I didn’t know Victoria was going to hurt Grace,” Helen said.
That sentence was both reassuring and horrifying.
“What did you know?” I asked.
Victoria paid Helen to request me through the staffing agency.
Eight thousand up front.
The rest in installments.
Helen was told I had once attempted to extort Nathan and that Victoria wanted to monitor whether I tried again.
“You believed that?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you ask Nathan?”
“Victoria said he knew.”
Nathan laughed bitterly.
“How many people did she tell that?”
Enough.
Helen admitted giving Victoria household schedules.
She told her when Lily visited.
She reported when Nathan interacted with us.
She also installed one of the hidden microphones after being told it was part of a security upgrade.
She had been a tool.
But tools can still cause harm.
“What about the archive box?” Rebecca asked.
Helen started crying.
“Victoria said it contained private photographs that would destroy Nathan.”
“So you stole it.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“In my sister’s garage.”
Reward.
The box survived.
Rebecca arranged immediate evidence recovery with documented custody.
Inside were originals.
Payment approvals.
Fulton invoices.
The fake settlement.
And something we had never seen.
A handwritten note from Charles.
Need written confirmation Grace accepted funds before N returns.
N.
Nathan.
The date was two days after my pregnancy email.
Charles had participated more actively than he admitted.
Nathan stared at the note.
Charles’s attorney requested another meeting.
This time nobody felt sympathy.
Charles admitted he had asked for documentation because the merger auditors might question the confidential payment.
“I wanted paperwork.”
“You wanted a clean file,” Nathan said.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t care whether it was true.”
“I didn’t know it was false.”
“You didn’t care enough to know.”
That was the difference.
Charles’s role stopped being a simple blackmail story.
He had chosen convenience before Victoria trapped him.
His later fear explained his silence.
It did not erase his first decision.
Then Helen identified one detail that changed Victoria’s kitchen attack.
The morning of the assault, Victoria asked Helen whether I was working alone.
Helen said yes.
“She asked about Lily too?”
Helen nodded.
“She specifically asked if Lily would be here.”
I felt cold.
“Why?”
“She said she wanted to give her a birthday present.”
Lily’s birthday was three months away.
Helen realized it sounded wrong only afterward.
Victoria had not unexpectedly discovered us in the kitchen.
She knew Lily would be there.
She knew Nathan was scheduled downtown until midnight.
She arrived carrying the hockey stick in her car.
The weapon was not a kitchen object.
May you like
She brought it.
📖 Helen’s confession recovered the stolen originals and showed Victoria arrived knowing Grace and Lily would be alone, with the hockey stick already in her car. 👇
