Chapter 6 - The Uninvited Guest
The atmosphere in the grand living room was so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife.
Victoria Vance sat on the edge of the cream velvet sofa, holding a porcelain cup of tea that Mrs. Ramirez had set down with cold, deliberate hostility. Victoria looked immaculate—expensive jewelry, tailored clothes, perfectly styled silver-blonde hair—but beneath the polished exterior, her hands were trembling slightly.
Across from her sat Hannah and me. Upstairs, Leo was keeping the girls occupied in the playroom, under strict instructions not to come down.
"You have five minutes, Victoria," I said, my voice cold and unyielding. "You haven't spoken to Emily since she was twelve years old. You didn't show up to our wedding. You didn't come to her funeral. Why are you sitting in my house?"
Victoria took a slow sip of her tea, setting the cup down on the saucer with a quiet clink.
"I know I have no right to be here, Marcus," Victoria began, her voice holding a rasp of age and suppressed emotion. "I know what you think of me. Emily hated me, and she had every right to. I was a terrible mother who chose my career in European real estate over my family."
"Then why come back now?" Hannah asked quietly, her sharp nurse's eyes observing Victoria's rigid posture. "Why park behind the estate like a stalker?"
Victoria looked at Hannah, her eyes softening slightly. "Because of Nathan Evans."
I leaned forward, my chest tightening. "What does Nathan have to do with you?"
Victoria took a deep breath, reaching into her leather handbag and pulling out a thick, legal-sized yellow envelope. She placed it on the coffee table between us.
"Nathan Evans didn't act alone, Marcus," Victoria said, dropping a bombshell into the quiet room.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "What are you talking about? The FBI audited his entire financial network. He was laundering money through our hotel construction projects!"
"He was laundering money for my ex-husband's firm," Victoria corrected, her eyes burning with an old, dark bitterness. "Arthur Vance. Emily's father."
I froze. "Arthur?"
"Arthur didn't die ten years ago like he let everyone believe," Victoria revealed, her voice dropping into a tense whisper. "He faked his death in Costa Rica to escape a federal indictment for securities fraud. He’s been living under an alias in Zurich for a decade. And Nathan Evans was his point man in Texas."
I stared at her, my mind reeling. Emily’s father... the man she thought had died of a heart attack when she was in college... was alive?
"When Emily started investigating the construction discrepancies in Lawson Hospitality six months before her death," Victoria continued, "she wasn't just stumbling upon Nathan’s greed. She was stumbling upon her own father's hidden financial empire. Nathan panicked. He knew if Emily brought those files to you, Arthur’s entire operation would be exposed to the Department of Justice."
"So Arthur ordered his own daughter's murder?" Hannah asked, her voice dripping with sheer disgust.
"Arthur didn't order it—Nathan took matters into his own hands to protect himself," Victoria said, shaking her head. "But Arthur covered it up. He used his connections in the Dallas medical board to silence the investigation and discredit you, Hannah."
Hannah gasped, placing a hand over her chest.
"Why are you telling us this now?" I demanded, grabbing the yellow envelope from the table. "Why bring this poison into my home now that my daughters are finally healing?"
Victoria looked up at me, tears finally brimming in her cold eyes. "Because Arthur is back in the United States, Marcus. He arrived in New York two days ago under a diplomatic passport. Nathan’s arrest ruined his money laundering pipelines. He knows about the flash drive you turned over to the FBI."
"The FBI has the drive," I said. "It's in federal evidence."
"The drive contains encrypted bank keys that can unlock eighty million dollars in offshore shell accounts," Victoria warned, her voice rising in desperation. "Arthur doesn't care about the murder trial, Marcus. He wants those keys before the federal prosecutors crack the encryption. And he knows the master recovery key was written down in Emily's personal diary."
I felt an icy hand clamp down on my spine.
Emily's personal diary.
It was sitting upstairs in my study. In the bottom drawer of my desk, inside a locked cedar box.
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"He's coming for this house, Marcus," Victoria whispered, leaning closer. "Arthur is a desperate, dangerous man who has spent twenty years living in the shadows. He ruined my life, he helped destroy Emily, and he will not hesitate to use those three little girls to get what he wants."
Before I could process her warning, the loud, jarring sound of a shattered window crashed through the upper floor of the mansion!
