Chapter 10 - THE SECRET RUTH KEPT
Emma stopped the recording.
Ruth sat beside her. She had come to Sofia’s office as soon as Emma asked.
“What did he mean?” Emma said.
Ruth gripped the edge of the table. “I don’t know what Charles thought he knew.”
“Mom.”
Ruth looked at the window. “When you were seventeen, I got sick. We had insurance, but it didn’t cover everything. Charles arranged a loan through the company. Your dad found out the paperwork called it an advance for a renovation job that never existed.”
Emma remembered that year: the long hospital visits, the careful smiles, her father insisting everything was fine.
“He was trying to protect me,” Ruth said. “Charles knew Thomas would be afraid you’d find out how close we came to losing the house. He used that fear to keep him quiet.”
Emma took her mother’s hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong by getting sick.”
“I know that now. Back then, every bill felt like my fault.”
Sofia looked at the invoice scans. “The loan may explain how Charles pulled Thomas into the accounts. It doesn’t make the later charges legitimate.”
They listened to the rest of the file. Charles admitted that Patricia had moved payments between projects to conceal losses in another part of their business. He wanted Thomas to sign papers saying he had managed the billing. Thomas refused.
“Your father did keep his promise,” Sofia said. “He kept the records.”
Emma wished he had lived to see someone believe him.
The next morning, Charles asked to speak with them. He arrived at Sofia’s office without Patricia or Nathan.
He looked older than Emma remembered from family dinners.
“I sent the drive,” he said.
“Why now?” Emma asked.
“Because Nathan told me about the wedding. About the dress.” Charles swallowed. “I knew Patricia was trying to get your shares. I told myself it was business. Then I saw what she was willing to do in a church full of people.”
“You watched her blame my father for five years.”
“Yes.”
Emma waited. Charles didn’t offer an excuse.
He set a folder on the table. “These are the original accounting records and the purchase communications. I’ll answer questions from your attorney and the investigators.”
Sofia took the folder. “Do you understand what this could mean for you?”
“I do.”
Emma could not forgive him because he finally felt ashamed. But she let Sofia take the records.
Charles rose to leave. At the door, he stopped.
“Nathan is trying to talk Patricia out of closing the deal,” he said. “She won’t listen.”
After he left, Sofia checked an incoming email and frowned.
“The court granted a temporary hold on the transfer of your shares,” she said. “But Patricia filed a new document this morning.”
“What document?”
Sofia turned her laptop toward Emma.
May you like
It claimed Thomas Walker had sold his interest in the company before he died.
At the bottom was her father’s signature, dated six months after his funeral.
