Chapter 6 - My Mother’s Death
My mother died when I was seventeen.
That was the fact I had carried for half my life.
Car accident.
Rain.
A mountain road.
No other vehicle involved.
I knew the police report.
I knew the funeral.
I knew the smell of lilies in our house for two weeks afterward.
I knew my father had never been the same.
Now a stranger was telling me there was more.
I showed Dad the message.
He read it once.
Then again.
His face became pale.
“Who has this number?”
“Very few people.”
“Change it.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“No more secrets.”
Dad looked toward the windows.
I followed his gaze.
Security teams were already moving across the grounds.
Nathan stood across the room watching us.
“What happened to her mother?”
Dad ignored him.
I stepped in front of my father.
“Was Mom’s accident really an accident?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“That was too fast.”
“Because I have answered that question in my head every day for nineteen years.”
“Then why would Adrian tell me otherwise?”
“To destabilize you.”
“You know it’s Adrian?”
“No.”
“But you think it is.”
“Yes.”
I held up the phone.
“He knew we found the ledger.”
Dad’s expression hardened.
“That means someone inside the property is feeding him information.”
Nathan looked toward the doorway.
“Celeste.”
I turned.
“You think she’s still working with her brother?”
“I think Celeste works for herself.”
“That is not an answer.”
Nathan paced once.
“She appeared three years ago.”
“She knew details about me that I had only told Adrian.”
“I asked her about him.”
“She said she had not spoken to him in years.”
“You believed her?”
Nathan gave me a bitter look.
“I believed a lot of things.”
That almost made me laugh.
Almost.
Dad’s security chief entered.
“Mr. Bennett.”
Dad turned.
“We found a device attached beneath the west terrace.”
“What kind?”
“Directional audio transmitter.”
Nathan stared.
“You’re saying someone bugged my house?”
The security chief looked at him.
“It isn’t your house.”
Even I almost smiled at that.
He continued.
“The device was active.”
Dad’s face darkened.
“Trace?”
“Signal was routed.”
“Can you estimate duration?”
“At least several weeks.”
I looked at my pendant.
“So Adrian may have been listening too.”
“Possibly.”
My phone rang again.
Unknown number.
Dad shook his head.
“Do not answer.”
I answered.
Silence.
Then a man’s voice.
Older.
Calm.
“Claire Bennett.”
I froze.
No one called me Bennett anymore.
Dad moved closer.
I put the phone on speaker.
“Adrian?”
The man laughed softly.
“Charles still teaches everyone to start with the obvious answer.”
My father’s face hardened.
“Adrian.”
“Hello, Charles.”
Dad’s voice became ice.
“You should have stayed hidden.”
“I did.”
“For eighteen years.”
“And look what your daughter uncovered in six months.”
I gripped the phone.
“What happened to my mother?”
Dad looked at me.
Adrian went silent.
Then he said.
“Your mother discovered that Charles’s empire had a parasite.”
Dad stepped closer.
“Do not.”
Adrian continued.
“She found accounts even he had missed.”
“Adrian.”
“She believed the theft came from inside Bennett Sovereign.”
“Stop.”
I looked at my father.
“Let him talk.”
Adrian laughed.
“Your father never liked that sentence.”
“What did she find?”
“A network.”
“Shell companies.”
“Political intermediaries.”
“Private contractors.”
“Money moving through legitimate businesses.”
My skin went cold.
“Was Ashford Global part of it?”
“Eventually.”
Nathan stared at the phone.
Adrian continued.
“But Nathan was a child when this began.”
“Useful.”
“Ambitious.”
“Easy to manipulate.”
Nathan’s face twisted.
“Go to hell.”
Adrian laughed.
“There you are.”
“The little founder who thought he was chosen.”
Nathan lunged toward the phone.
A security officer blocked him.
I spoke.
“What happened to my mother?”
Adrian became quiet.
“She was going to expose the network.”
Dad closed his eyes.
I could barely breathe.
“And?”
“Then her car went off a mountain road.”
My hand shook.
Dad grabbed the phone.
“That is enough.”
Adrian’s voice sharpened.
“No, Charles.”
“It was never enough.”
Dad said one sentence.
“I proved the brake lines were intact.”
My head snapped toward him.
Brake lines.
That detail had never appeared in anything my father told me.
Adrian laughed.
“Thank you.”
Silence fell.
My father realized what he had revealed.
I stared at him.
“You investigated sabotage.”
Dad said nothing.
“You told me no other vehicle was involved.”
“Claire—”
“You never told me you suspected someone tampered with her car.”
Dad’s shoulders lowered.
“I suspected everything.”
“Because your mother called me twenty-three minutes before she died.”
I felt the floor disappear beneath me.
“What did she say?”
Dad looked at Adrian’s number still glowing on my phone.
Then he looked at me.
May you like
“She said she had discovered the name behind Blackthorn.”
The line went dead.
