The Dead Woman's Secret

Marcus's face filled the phone screen, a cut above his eye and his shirt torn. "I was there the night your mother died, Sloane. And Dominic's father is the reason she's dead."

I grabbed the phone from Dominic's hand. The video kept playing, Marcus's voice tinny through the speaker, and I wanted to throw the damn thing against the wall but my fingers wouldn't let go.

"Catherine called me that night." Marcus wiped blood from his eyebrow, smearing it across his temple. "She was terrified. Said Richard Ashford had found her, threatened to take you away if she ever told anyone about the patent theft. She knew what kind of man he was. What he was capable of."

My nails dug into the phone case.

"She took those pills to protect you, Sloane. To make sure you'd be safe from the Ashfords." Marcus leaned closer to the camera. "I've kept this secret for twenty years. Protected Dominic from the truth about what his father did. But now he's trying to destroy me, so—"

I stopped the video.

The hallway was too quiet. Too still. Iris's door was closed, and somewhere downstairs a clock was ticking, and my mother had been dead for two decades but suddenly she was right here, her ghost standing between us.

"Sloane—"

"Was your father capable of that?" My voice came out flat. "Threatening a woman and her kid?"

Dominic didn't answer right away. He just stood there, his face carved from marble, and the the pause extended longer than comfortable so long I thought he might not answer at all.

Then: "Yes."

The word hit like a fist.

"He was capable of that and worse." Dominic's hands were shaking. Actually shaking. "That's why I've spent the last decade trying to undo his damage. Why I've been so careful with every decision, every acquisition. He destroyed people, Sloane. He enjoyed it."

I wanted to sit down but there was nowhere to sit except the floor.

"So Marcus is telling the truth."

"I don't know." He reached for the phone but I pulled it back. "I need to verify—"

"Verify what? That your father was a monster? You just said he was."

"That Marcus was actually there. That any of this happened the way he claims." Dominic's jaw was tight. "He's a liar, Sloane. He's been lying to us for months."

"Yeah, no, but he knew my mother." I pulled up the photo of the death certificate again, stared at the handwriting in the margin. "He has her death certificate. He knows things."

"Or he's done his research." But Dominic's voice lacked conviction. "Let me call my investigator. Please."

I handed him the phone.

---

We ended up in his study because apparently that's where rich people went to process trauma—surrounded by leather-bound books and expensive scotch and furniture that cost more than my entire childhood.

Dominic paced while he talked on the phone, his voice low and clipped, asking questions I couldn't quite hear. I sat in one of the chairs by the window and watched the city lights blur together, tried not to think about my mother's voice on a phone twenty years ago, terrified and alone.

Tried not to think about what she'd done to keep me safe.

"Yes. Catherine Whitley. I need everything—phone records, bank statements, any connection to Marcus Ashford." Dominic stopped pacing. "How fast can you get it?"

I picked at the chipped polish on my thumb. The sparrow tattoo on my wrist looked darker in this light, almost black instead of blue.

"I don't care what it costs. I need it now."

He ended the call and stood there for a moment, staring at nothing.

"Your investigator works late," I said.

"I pay him to be available." Dominic set the phone on his desk, carefully, like it might explode. "He'll have preliminary information within the hour."

"And then what?"

"Then we'll know if Marcus is lying."

I laughed, but it came out wrong. "You mean you'll know if your father actually killed my mother."

"He didn't kill her, Sloane. If this is true—if any of it's true—she made a choice."

"Because he threatened her." I stood up. The chair scraped against the hardwood, too loud. "Because he was going to take me away from her. That's not a choice, that's—"

"I know." His voice cracked. "I know what that is."

We stared at each other across the study, and I could see it in his face—the guilt, the horror, the weight of carrying his father's sins. And I wanted to hate him for it, wanted to blame him, but he'd been a kid too when my mother died. Younger than me. Just another person his father had destroyed.

"I need air," I said.

"Sloane—"

But I was already walking out, down the hallway, past Iris's closed door, down the stairs to the living room where the windows stretched floor to ceiling and the city sprawled below like a circuit board, all lights and angles and cold geometry.

My phone buzzed. A text from Jade: you ok? haven't heard from you

I typed back: define ok

Three dots appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again. Finally: that bad huh

my dead mom might have been murdered by my boyfriend's dad so yeah

WHAT

I turned the phone off.

---

Dominic found me twenty minutes later, standing at the window with my forehead pressed against the glass. The city looked different from up here—smaller, manageable, like something you could control if you just had enough money and power and ruthlessness.

"The investigator called back," he said.

I didn't turn around. "And?"

"Marcus was in contact with your mother. The phone records confirm it." He moved closer but didn't touch me. "But she didn't call him that night. He called her. Repeatedly, in the weeks before she died."

My breath fogged the glass.

"There's more." Dominic's reflection appeared beside mine in the window. "The investigator thinks Marcus may have been the one who told my father where Catherine was hiding."

I turned around then. "What?"

"The timing matches. Marcus called her, then three days later my father's private investigator filed a report about her location." Dominic's hands were in his pockets, his shoulders rigid. "And a week after that, she was dead."

"So Marcus—" I couldn't finish the sentence.

"May have been the reason my father found her at all." His voice was quiet. Careful. "Which means everything in that video is a lie. He wasn't protecting you. He was protecting himself."

The room tilted slightly. I grabbed the back of the couch.

"That tracks," I said, and the words tasted like ash. "Of course he'd weaponize her death. Of course he'd make it about—"

"Money." Dominic pulled out his phone, showed me another message from Marcus. "He wants ten million dollars and all charges dropped. Says if I don't comply, he'll go public with his version of events."

I read the message twice. The words blurred together but the number stayed sharp: $10,000,000.

"He's blackmailing you with my mother's death."

"Yes."

"And you think he's lying about all of it."

"I think he's lying about most of it." Dominic pocketed the phone. "But there's probably some truth mixed in. That's how the best lies work."

I walked to the bar cart, poured myself two fingers of something amber that probably cost more than my rent. Drank it in one swallow. It burned going down but I welcomed the pain, needed something physical to anchor me.

"I need to know the full truth," I said. "About my mother's death. About what your father did. About all of it." I set the glass down, met his eyes. "Even if it destroys what's left between us."

He didn't flinch. "I'll help you find it."

"Why?" The question came out sharper than I meant. "Why would you risk everything for me? Your company, your reputation, your—"

"Because you're not a transaction." He crossed the room, stopped just close enough that I could see the exhaustion in his face, the lines around his eyes that hadn't been there a month ago. "You never were."

My throat tightened.

"I don't know what happened the night your mother died," he continued. "I don't know if my father threatened her, or if Marcus is lying, or if the truth is somewhere in between. But I know I'm not going to let Marcus use her death to manipulate either of us." He paused. "And I know I'm not my father. I won't let his sins define the rest of my life."

I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him so badly it physically hurt, this ache in my chest that spread through my ribs and made breathing difficult.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." I picked up the glass again, realized it was empty, set it back down. "We find the truth. Together. Whatever it costs."

things were different now in his expression—relief, maybe, or gratitude, or something I didn't have a name for.

His phone rang.

We both stared at it for a second, and I had this wild thought that if we just didn't answer, if we just let it ring and ring and ring, maybe we could stay in this moment forever. This fragile truce where we were on the same side, where the truth hadn't destroyed us yet.

But Dominic answered.

"Yes?" He listened, and I watched his face change—watched the color drain from it, watched his free hand grip the edge of the bar cart. "You're certain?"

I moved closer. "What is it?"

He held up one finger. Wait.

"Send me everything. Now." He ended the call and just stood there, staring at the phone like it had grown teeth.

"Dominic."

"The investigator found Catherine's medical records from the night she died." His voice was hollow. "She didn't take pills. She was poisoned—and the hospital flagged it as suspicious but someone buried the report."

The room went very still.

"Who?" I barely recognized my own voice. "Who buried it?"

Dominic looked up, and his eyes were full of something that looked like horror.

"The attending physician's signature on the burial order," he said slowly, each word careful and deliberate, like he was trying to make sense of them himself. "It's my father's."

My knees gave out. I grabbed the bar cart but it wasn't enough, and suddenly Dominic was there, his hands on my arms, holding me up.

"That's not possible," I said. "Your father wasn't a doctor."

"No. But he sat on the hospital board. He had access to—" Dominic's phone buzzed again. He looked at the screen and went completely white. "Sloane."

"What?"

"The investigator just sent the full file." His hands were shaking again, worse than before. "There's a photo of the burial order. The signature—it's not just my father's name. It's his actual signature. His handwriting."

I took the phone from him. The image was grainy but clear enough: a hospital form dated twenty years ago, Catherine Whitley's name at the top, and at the bottom, in bold black ink, Richard Ashford's distinctive scrawl.

Below that, in smaller text: Cause of death: Accidental overdose. No autopsy required.

And in the margin, in different handwriting—hurried, almost frantic—someone had written: Tox screen shows aconite poisoning. Flagged for investigation.

But that note had been crossed out. Heavily. Like someone had tried to erase it completely.

"Aconite," I said. "What's aconite?"

Dominic's face was gray. "It's a plant toxin. Extremely lethal. Causes cardiac arrest that mimics a heart attack or overdose." He took the phone back, scrolled through more images. "It's almost impossible to detect unless you're specifically looking for it."

"But someone was looking for it."

"Yes. And my father made sure they stopped looking."

The implications crashed over me in waves. My mother hadn't taken pills. She'd been murdered. And Dominic's father had covered it up, had used his power and influence to bury the evidence, to make sure no one ever knew the truth.

"We need to call the police," I said.

"With what evidence? This is twenty years old. The statute of limitations—"

"I don't care about the statute of limitations." My voice was rising but I couldn't stop it. "Someone killed my mother and your father helped them get away with it."

"I know." Dominic set the phone down. "I know, and I'm going to—"

His phone rang again.

We both stared at it. The screen showed a number I didn't recognize, but Dominic's face said he knew exactly who it was.

He answered on speaker.

"Mr. Ashford." The investigator's voice was tight. "You need to see this now. I found something else in the hospital records."

"What?"

"The nurse who was on duty that night—the one who wrote the note about the tox screen—she filed a formal complaint with the hospital administration three days after Catherine Whitley died. Said she'd been threatened by a man who told her to keep quiet about what she'd seen."

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

"Did she identify him?" Dominic asked.

"No. But she described him." Papers rustled on the other end of the line. "Mid-forties, expensive suit, British accent. Told her he'd make sure she never worked in medicine again if she pursued the investigation."

Dominic closed his eyes.

"There's one more thing," the investigator said. "The complaint was filed, but it never went anywhere. Someone pulled it from the official record within a week. And the nurse—" He paused. "She left the country two months later. Moved to Australia and never came back."

"Find her," Dominic said. "I don't care what it takes. Find her and get her statement."

"Already on it. But Mr. Ashford—" The investigator's voice dropped. "There's something else you need to know. About the attending physician signature."

"What about it?"

"I had a handwriting expert look at it. It's definitely your father's signature. But the date on the form—" Another pause. "It's dated three days before Catherine Whitley died."

The phone slipped from Dominic's hand and clattered on the floor.