Chapter 39
I stared at the journal entry until the words blurred.
Marcus killed her. I helped him hide it. I am damned.
The handwriting was shaky, nothing like the confident script in the earlier entries. Dominic's father had written this three days before his heart attack. Three days before he died with this secret still lodged in his chest like a bullet.
"There's more." The investigator's voice crackled through the speakerphone on Dominic's desk. "I found the safety deposit box. Your father kept journals. Detailed ones."
Dominic hadn't moved since he'd picked up the phone from the floor. He stood at the window, his reflection ghost-pale in the glass, and I watched his jaw work like he was chewing on words he couldn't spit out.
"Send everything," he said.
"Already on the way. But Mr. Ashford—" The investigator paused. "You should prepare yourself. It's... extensive."
The line went dead.
I set the photocopy down on the desk, my hands steadier than they should've been. The sparrow on my wrist caught the early morning light. My mother had a tattoo in the same spot. A cardinal. She'd gotten it the year before she died, and I'd asked her why a cardinal, and she'd said because they mate for life, and even after one dies, the other keeps singing.
I hadn't understood then.
"He knew." Dominic's voice was flat. "My father knew Marcus killed her, and he helped cover it up anyway."
"Yeah, no, that's—" I stopped. Swallowed. "That tracks, actually. For someone who spent his whole life protecting the family name."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
He turned from the window. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry, and somehow that was worse than if he'd been crying. "Don't make excuses for him. There is no excuse for what he did."
The intercom buzzed. Patricia's voice, crisp despite the early hour: "The courier is here."
The journals filled two banker's boxes.
Dominic opened the first one with hands that shook just enough for me to notice. Leather-bound notebooks, the expensive kind with cream-colored pages and ribbon bookmarks. His father's handwriting filled every page in neat, controlled lines.
I reached for one dated fifteen years ago. Flipped it open.
Marcus came to my office today. He knows about the patent. He knows everything.
My breath caught.
Dominic was reading over my shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, and I turned the page.
He showed me the original filing documents. Catherine Whitley's signature, clear as day. He said if I don't help him 'manage the situation,' he'll go public. The company would survive the scandal, but the family wouldn't. Iris is only three. She doesn't deserve to grow up with this hanging over her.
"Manage the situation," I repeated. The words tasted like ash. "That's what he called murdering my mother?"
Dominic pulled out another journal. This one was dated two months later.
Catherine came to see me. She's terrified. Marcus has been following her, calling her at all hours, showing up at her apartment. She asked if I could help her disappear, start over somewhere safe. I told her I would look into it. I should have done more. I should have—
The entry ended there. The next page was blank except for a single line:
She's dead. Marcus says it was an overdose. I know better.
I closed the journal. Set it down carefully, like it might shatter. My nails dug crescents into my palms.
"Keep reading," Dominic said. His voice had gone somewhere distant and cold.
I didn't want to. But I picked up the next journal anyway.
Marcus came to the hospital. He told me what he'd done—the aconite, the falsified records, the nurse he'd threatened. He said if I didn't sign off on the death certificate, he'd make sure Iris's trust fund disappeared. He'd make sure she had nothing. He looked me in the eye and said, 'Family protects family, Richard. Even from the truth.'
The next entry was dated a week later.
I signed the certificate. God help me, I signed it. I told myself I was protecting Iris, protecting the company, protecting everything my father built. But I was protecting myself. My comfort. My reputation. I let an innocent woman's murder go unpunished because I was too much of a coward to face the consequences.
I turned the page. My hands were shaking now.
Catherine came to me for help. She trusted me. She thought because I was an Ashford, because I had power and resources, I could protect her from Marcus. Instead, I let him kill her. I let him poison her and I helped him hide it and I will carry this sin until the day I die.
"Sloane." Dominic's hand touched my shoulder.
I jerked away. Stood up so fast the chair scraped against the floor. "Don't."
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" I spun to face him. "For your father being a coward? For Marcus being a murderer? For the fact that my mother died begging for help from the one person who could've saved her?"
He flinched. Good.
"She came to him." My voice cracked. "She was terrified and she came to him and he—"
"I know."
"You don't know shit." But even as I said it, I knew it wasn't fair. He was reading the same words I was, learning that his father had been complicit in my mother's death, and the look on his face was like watching someone drown in slow motion.
I picked up another journal. Flipped through pages of anguish and self-recrimination, entries where Dominic's father detailed every interaction with Marcus, every threat, every moment he'd chosen silence over truth.
Then I found the entry about me.
I saw Catherine's daughter today. She was at the park with her grandmother. She has her mother's eyes. She was laughing at something, completely unaware that her mother died trying to protect her from us. From what we are. I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness. Instead, I walked away. I always walk away.
The journal slipped from my hands.
Dominic caught it before it hit the floor. He set it on the desk, then straightened and looked at me with an expression I couldn't read.
"My mother died trying to protect me from your family," I said. The words came out flat, factual. "And your father knew. He knew and he did nothing."
"Yes."
"That's it? Just yes?"
"What do you want me to say?" His voice was still that terrible, distant calm. "That he was a good man who made a mistake? He wasn't. He was a coward who chose comfort over justice, and my mother's death didn't change that. Nothing changed it until—"
He stopped. Picked up the last journal.
The final entry was dated three days before his father's heart attack.
I should have stopped him. I should have protected her. I should have gone to the police the moment Marcus told me what he'd done. Instead, I signed the papers and I kept his secret and I let Catherine Whitley's daughter grow up thinking her mother was a drug addict who overdosed in a hospital bed. I let her carry that shame. I let her believe the lie. God forgive me. God forgive me. I am damned.
Dominic set the journal down. Walked back to the window. The sun was higher now, painting the city in shades of gold and shadow, and he stood there with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders rigid.
"He was going to tell the truth," Dominic said. "That's what the investigator found. My father had scheduled a meeting with the district attorney. He was going to confess everything—the patent theft, the cover-up, Marcus's blackmail. All of it."
"When?"
"The day after he died."
The room went very quiet.
"So Marcus killed him too," I said.
"We don't know that."
"Don't we?" I moved to stand beside him at the window. "Your father was about to expose him. Marcus had already killed once to protect his secrets. You really think he'd let your father destroy everything?"
Dominic's reflection in the glass was a stranger's face—hard and cold and absolutely certain. "No," he said. "I don't."
Patricia arrived twenty minutes later with coffee neither of us touched and a tablet loaded with scanned documents.
"The investigator sent these," she said, setting the tablet on the desk. "Bank records showing payments from Marcus to offshore accounts. Phone records showing calls between Marcus and the nurse who fled to Australia. And this—"
She pulled up a video file.
"Security footage from the hospital," Patricia said. "The night Catherine Whitley died. Watch the timestamp."
I leaned forward. The video showed a hospital corridor, empty except for a figure in an expensive suit walking toward the camera. The timestamp read 11:47 PM.
Marcus Ashford.
He walked with the easy confidence of someone who belonged there, who had every right to be there, and he disappeared into a room at the end of the hall.
Catherine's room.
"He stayed for six minutes," Patricia said. Her voice was carefully neutral. "Then he left. Catherine Whitley was pronounced dead forty minutes later."
My stomach turned over.
Dominic's hand found mine. Squeezed once, hard enough to hurt, then let go.
"There's more," Patricia said. She pulled up another document. "The investigator tracked down the nurse. She's willing to testify. She kept copies of everything—the original blood work showing aconite poisoning, her complaint to hospital administration, even a recording of Marcus threatening her."
"A recording?" I stared at her.
"She was scared. She wanted proof in case something happened to her." Patricia's expression was grim. "Smart woman."
Dominic picked up the tablet. Scrolled through the documents with the focused intensity of someone reading a battle plan. "This is enough," he said. "This is enough to bury him."
"It's enough to bury all of you," Patricia said. "The moment this goes public, the Ashford name is finished. The company, the reputation, everything your family built—gone."
"Good."
Patricia's eyebrows rose. "Dominic—"
"I'm calling a press conference." He set the tablet down and reached for his phone. "Today. I'm going to tell them everything. The stolen patent, Marcus's crimes, my father's complicity. All of it."
I grabbed his wrist. "Wait."
He looked at me, and for the first time since we'd started reading the journals, something flickered in his eyes. Something that looked almost like hope.
"What will it cost you?" I asked.
"Everything." He said it like it was simple. Like he'd already done the math and accepted the answer. "The company, the reputation, probably my freedom if they decide I knew more than I did. The board will remove me. The shareholders will sue. Iris's trust fund—"
"Stop." My grip tightened. "Why would you do that?"
"Because it's what you deserve." His free hand came up to cup my face, thumb brushing across my cheekbone. "The truth. All of it. No more secrets, no more lies, no more choosing the family name over what's right."
My throat closed.
"I'm not my father," Dominic said. His voice was low, fierce. "I won't make his mistakes. I won't choose comfort over justice. I won't let Marcus win."
"Even if it destroys you?"
"Especially then."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was being stupid, that there had to be another way, that sacrificing everything wouldn't bring my mother back. But the words stuck in my throat because I knew—I knew—that this was the only way he could live with himself. The only way either of us could.
Patricia cleared her throat. "Before you make any dramatic gestures, you should know the board has called an emergency meeting. They're moving to remove you as CEO before you can go public."
Dominic's hand dropped from my face. "When?"
"Two hours."
"Let them." He picked up his phone again. "I don't need to be CEO to tell the truth."
"No, but you need to be CEO to protect Iris's inheritance." Patricia's voice went sharp. "The moment you're removed, Marcus's allies on the board will move to dissolve her trust. They'll claim you mismanaged company assets, that you're mentally unfit, whatever they need to say to strip her of everything your father left her."
Dominic went very still.
"Think about what you're teaching her," Patricia said. "That the truth matters more than her future? That justice is worth losing everything? Because that's what she'll learn if you do this."
"She'll learn that some things are more important than money," Dominic said.
"She's eight years old. She won't understand that. She'll just know her brother destroyed everything their father built."
The neither spoke between them like a wire pulled taut.
I stepped back. Let go of Dominic's wrist. "She's right."
He turned to me, and the betrayal in his eyes was a physical blow.
"Not about staying quiet," I said quickly. "About Iris. You can't—" I stopped. Started again. "My mother died trying to protect me from your family. You really think she'd want me to let you sacrifice your sister for my revenge?"
"This isn't revenge. It's justice."
"Yeah, no, it's both." I crossed my arms. "And I'm not worth it."
"Don't." His voice went hard. "Don't do that. Don't make yourself small because you think it'll make this easier."
"I'm not making myself small. I'm being practical."
"You sound like Marcus."
The words hit like a slap.
Patricia's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and her expression shifted. "Marcus has been spotted at the Canadian border. The FBI is moving to intercept."
Dominic's head snapped up. "When?"
"Now. They're—" She paused, reading. "They've got him. He's in custody."
The relief should have been overwhelming. Instead, I felt nothing. Just a hollow space where the anger had been, and the terrible certainty that this wasn't over.
"The board meeting is still happening," Patricia said. "They'll use Marcus's arrest as an excuse to remove you. They'll say you knew about his crimes and did nothing, that you're complicit."
"I don't care."
"Iris does." Patricia's voice softened. "Think about what you're teaching her, Dominic. Think about the lesson she'll carry for the rest of her life."
Dominic looked at me. Then at the journals spread across his desk. Then at the window, where the city sprawled below us in all its indifferent glory.
"I need to make a call," he said.
He reached for his phone.
I grabbed his arm. "Wait."
He froze.
"There's another way." I pulled out my own phone with hands that had started shaking again. Pulled up a number I'd been staring at for the last hour, trying to decide if I was brave enough or stupid enough to use it.
"Marcus called me," I said. "An hour ago. Before the FBI picked him up—this must have been right before. He wants to meet. Just me."
Dominic's face went hard. "Absolutely not."
"He says he'll turn himself in if I come alone. He says—" I swallowed. "He says he'll tell me everything. Why he killed her. What really happened. All of it."
"It's a trap."
"Probably."
"Then why—"
"Because I need to hear it from him." The words came out raw. "I need to look him in the eye and hear him say it. I need—"
"No." Dominic took the phone from my hand. "You're not going anywhere near him."
I snatched it back. "It's not your choice."