Chapter 9 - THE OTHER HALF
Nathan agreed to meet at Sofia’s office. He arrived alone, carrying the green ledger from his video.
Emma stayed seated when he walked in.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I am.”
“I never wanted any of this.”
“You knew what Veronica planned.”
“I knew she was going to pull a seam. I didn’t know she’d cut through the dress.”
“You watched me stand there.”
Nathan looked down at his hands. “Mom told me you needed to learn how people would treat you if I wasn’t beside you.”
“Is that what you believed?”
“At the time.”
Emma wanted to ask when he had stopped believing it. She decided the answer would not change what he had done.
Nathan put the ledger on the table. It listed company payments alongside handwritten notes from Emma’s father. Several pages were marked with question marks.
“The recording keeps going,” Nathan said. “Your dad told my mother he had another copy of the invoices. He said if she blamed him, he’d take everything to the authorities.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“I don’t have it. My father told me about it years ago.”
Sofia leaned forward. “Why bring this now?”
Nathan rubbed his forehead. “Mom is selling the properties even after you challenged the transfer. She says the deal closes Friday. I told her it would blow up in her face. She told me to keep Emma distracted.”
“You could have warned me,” Emma said.
“I’m warning you now.”
“You’re late.”
“I know.”
Sofia asked Nathan to leave the ledger. He agreed, but as he stood, his phone rang. He glanced at it and let it ring.
“Your mother?” Emma asked.
“Yes.”
“Tell her we found the recording.”
“No.” Nathan slipped the phone into his pocket. “Let me talk to my father first. If he’ll give us the original invoices, we can stop her without dragging your dad’s name through another public fight.”
Emma studied him. He looked frightened. She had seen Nathan worry about appearances, money, and his mother’s temper. She had never seen him worried for someone else.
“You have until tonight,” she said.
He nodded and left.
That afternoon, Sofia confirmed that Patricia had scheduled the sale to close Friday despite the dispute over Emma’s signature. Sofia filed an urgent request to block it.
Near dusk, a package arrived at her office. Inside was a flash drive and a note written in block letters: THOMAS WALKER KEPT HIS PROMISE.
The drive held scans of the original invoices, each dated and signed before addresses were added. It also held a second audio file.
Emma played it.
Her father’s voice came through the speakers. “I’m not signing over Emma’s future so you can bury what you did.”
A second voice answered, low and strained.
It wasn’t Patricia.
May you like
It was Nathan’s father, Charles Whitmore.
And he said, “Then I’ll tell your daughter what really happened to her mother.”
