Chapter 13 - Her Own Voice
We listened at the station the next morning.
Ruiz warned us that the recording had been made two nights before the party.
Hannah sat beside me.
She kept both feet flat on the floor.
The audio began with a door closing.
Then Vanessa.
“Sit up. You look worse when you do that.”
Hannah’s recorded voice was faint.
“Where’s Lily?”
“Upstairs.”
A pause.
The sound of paper.
“You sign here, here, and on the last page.”
“I want to see her.”
“You want a lot for somebody who stole from her own family.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
Vanessa laughed.
“Do you think that matters anymore?”
Beside me, Hannah’s jaw tightened.
On the recording, Vanessa continued.
“Daniel believes what lets him sleep. Right now, that’s me.”
I stared at the table.
Hannah had told me she took the phone when Vanessa left it on a tray.
Before hiding it, she had found the recorder.
She hadn’t known whether it would keep working once the screen went dark.
It had.
“I’m not signing away the house,” Hannah said on the recording.
“Then maybe you don’t get to leave it.”
A chair scraped.
Then Mark’s voice.
“Stop talking. We need the signatures, not another argument.”
Vanessa sounded irritated.
“You moved money through her name. You wrote half the papers. Don’t act nervous now.”
The room went completely still.
Mark said something too low to hear.
Vanessa answered clearly.
“After the wedding, we sell. Daniel signs whatever I put in front of him.”
Then came a sound that made Hannah close her eyes.
Lily laughing somewhere upstairs.
My daughter had been happy for a moment above the room where her mother was being threatened.
On the recording, Hannah began to cry.
“Let me talk to her.”
Vanessa’s voice hardened.
“Sign.”
Ruiz stopped the audio.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Then Hannah asked, “Is that enough to show I didn’t leave?”
“It supports that very strongly.”
“And the money?”
“We have the ledger, bank records, device records, and witnesses. This helps establish what they knew.”
Hannah nodded once.
Not relief exactly.
More like someone setting down a bag after carrying it so long she’d forgotten its weight.
As we stood to leave, Ruiz’s colleague entered.
He handed her a message.
She read it, then looked at Hannah.
“Ruth is awake.”
Hannah pressed a hand against her mouth.
Ruiz continued.
“She says there’s something Vanessa kept from you.”
“What?”
“Letters.”
Hannah frowned.
“Whose letters?”
May you like
Ruiz looked at me.
“Yours, Daniel.”
