Chapter 9 - THE VOICE FROM THE DEAD
We returned home after sunrise.
Nobody slept.
Grace placed a small digital recorder on the dining table.
The same table where Amara had asked to sit beside me.
“How long have you had this?”
“Two years.”
My voice hardened.
“You let me bury my wife without hearing it?”
Grace flinched.
“My husband gave it to me the night before he died.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I was scared.”
“You should have been scared of what would happen if I found out you hid this.”
Amara looked up from Grace’s lap.
I stopped.
The anger drained out of me.
That was who I had been.
A man people were too afraid to tell the truth.
Grace saw the change.
“I’m sorry.”
I sat down.
“Play it.”
She pressed the button.
Static.
Then Elena’s voice filled the room.
My wife.
Alive again for nineteen seconds before my lungs forgot how to work.
“Julian, if you ever hear this, then I failed.”
I closed my eyes.
“I need you to know that I loved you. I loved you when you were poor. I loved you when you were impossible. And I loved you when I became afraid of the world you were building around us.”
My throat tightened.
“I arranged the brake scare. I thought if you believed your enemies could reach us, you would finally leave.”
A pause.
“I was wrong.”
Her breathing shook.
“I discovered Claire and Detective Crowe were moving money through your companies. Vincent helped me hire Aaron, but I think someone found out.”
Grace began crying silently.
“If something happens to me, don’t become worse. Please.”
I bent forward.
Elena continued.
“Sophia needs a father, not a king.”
Then another pause.
Longer.
“And if Sophia is gone too…”
Her voice broke.
“I need you to do one thing for me.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Become the man she believed you were.”
The recording ended.
Nobody spoke.
I stared at the empty chair beside me.
For two years, I had imagined revenge.
Names.
Graves.
Blood.
Now all I could hear was Elena saying:
Don’t become worse.
Amara climbed out of Grace’s lap.
She walked toward me.
Then she wrapped her arms around my leg.
“I’m sorry your little girl went away.”
I looked down at her.
Something inside me broke open.
I lifted her.
For the first time in two years, I cried in front of another person.
Not quietly.
Not with dignity.
I cried like a father.
Later that afternoon, Marcus entered with bad news.
“Vince is missing.”
I wiped my face.
“And?”
“He took six million dollars from one of our accounts.”
“That’s not the bad news.”
“No.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
Vince was standing beside a private plane.
And beside him was someone I recognized immediately.
Dr. Helen Shaw.
Sophia’s pediatrician.
Marcus looked at me.
“She signed Sophia’s death certificate.”
My stomach turned.
“What are you saying?”
He swallowed.
“We reopened the hospital transfer records.”
May you like
“And?”
“There’s no record Sophia’s body ever arrived at the morgue.”
