Chapter 13 - MY MOTHER’S SECRET
Back at the safe house, I confronted Mom.
“What did she mean?”
Mom sat at the kitchen table.
Arthur stood behind her.
Nobody spoke.
“Tell me.”
Finally Mom said:
“The stolen money belonged to the Whitmore Foundation.”
“I know.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“It belonged to you.”
My stomach tightened.
Before my grandfather died, he created a trust.
Eighteen million dollars.
For me.
Dad was only supposed to manage it until I turned twenty-five.
Instead, he stole it.
Mom discovered the theft.
“But there’s more,” she said.
Grandfather suspected Dad years earlier.
So he had changed his will.
If Daniel committed fraud against the trust, he lost control of the Whitmore estate.
Everything transferred to Mom.
And eventually to me.
“That’s why Dad wanted you dead?”
“Yes.”
Vanessa believed killing Mom would give Dad permanent control.
But the will had a hidden clause.
If Mom died suspiciously, the estate froze.
That was why Daniel couldn’t access everything.
Arthur smiled faintly.
“Your grandfather was a careful man.”
Then Agent Brooks entered.
“We found something.”
He placed a file on the table.
A missing-person report.
Arthur’s name was on it.
Filed three years earlier.
The night Mom disappeared.
But it wasn’t Arthur who was reported missing.
It was another woman.
Vanessa Cole.
I stared.
“How could Vanessa be missing?”
Brooks turned the page.
The photograph showed a completely different woman.
Mom whispered:
“Vanessa Cole isn’t her real name.”
May you like
The woman who married my father had stolen someone else’s identity.
And the real Vanessa Cole had vanished three years ago.
