Chapter 6 - victoria's sister)
Victoria answered Daniel’s call at 1:14 in the morning.
Clara listened from across the kitchen.
“Daniel?”
Victoria sounded sleepy.
Daniel’s voice was flat.
“Do you have a sister?”
Silence.
Then, “What?”
“Do you have a sister named Rebecca?”
A long pause.
“No.”
Clara watched Daniel’s face.
He closed his eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Answer.”
“I don’t have a sister.”
“Did you ever?”
Another pause.
Clara could hear faint movement on the other end.
A door closing.
Victoria’s voice became quieter.
“Who told you that name?”
Daniel looked at Clara.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Victoria.”
“Who told you?”
Daniel ended the call.
He stared at the phone.
“She knows.”
Clara nodded.
He sat down heavily.
“Oh God.”
“Daniel.”
“She knew.”
“We don’t know what she knows.”
“She knew the name.”
“Yes.”
“What if Rebecca was her sister?”
“We find out.”
Daniel looked sick.
“And if I hurt her?”
“You take responsibility.”
“What if she died?”
Clara did not answer.
At two in the morning Adrian arrived.
At two fifteen they accessed old county property records.
At two forty they located Robert and Evelyn Hayes’s 2009 household registration connected to a private school enrollment record.
Three children.
Victoria Anne Hayes.
Rebecca Lynn Hayes.
Michael Robert Hayes.
Daniel stopped reading.
“She lied.”
Adrian continued searching.
Rebecca disappeared from local records in late 2009.
No graduation.
No marriage record.
No professional license.
No social media history.
Nothing.
Michael Hayes moved to Colorado in 2013.
Victoria remained in Dallas.
Clara looked at Adrian.
“Can you find the settlement?”
“If Charles paid one.”
“He would’ve hidden it.”
“He couldn’t hide everything.”
By sunrise, Adrian found a transfer.
Not from Vance Holdings.
From a dormant shell company called Westbridge Consulting.
Three million dollars.
Paid November 3, 2009.
Recipient:
R.H. Family Custodial Trust.
Daniel whispered, “Three million.”
Clara looked closer.
Trustee.
Robert Hayes.
Adrian said, “Your father paid the family.”
“Then why did Victoria marry Daniel?” Clara asked.
Daniel flinched at the word marry.
Adrian leaned back.
“Maybe she didn’t know.”
“She knew Rebecca’s name.”
“That doesn’t prove she knew Daniel was involved.”
Clara thought about the missing folder.
The succession questions.
The secret phone.
The refusal to sign the prenup.
“It proves enough to investigate.”
At eight thirty Daniel received a text from Victoria.
We need to talk alone.
He showed Clara.
“No,” she said.
“I’m going.”
“Then I’m coming.”
“She said alone.”
“Exactly.”
Daniel shook his head.
“I need to hear what she says.”
“And if this is a setup?”
“For what?”
Clara looked at him.
“The folder is missing. She knew something about Rebecca. Her father warned me to stop digging. You think they are improvising?”
Daniel said nothing.
He eventually agreed to meet Victoria at a public café.
Clara and Adrian sat in a vehicle across the street.
Daniel wore a wire.
Victoria arrived seventeen minutes late.
She looked exhausted.
No makeup.
Hair tied back.
Nothing like the polished woman from the engagement dinner.
She sat across from Daniel.
For almost a minute, neither spoke.
Then Victoria said, “Rebecca was my sister.”
Daniel lowered his head.
Clara watched through binoculars.
Victoria continued.
“She was twenty-two.”
“What happened to her?”
“You already know.”
“No. I know I crashed a car.”
“You destroyed her life.”
Daniel swallowed.
“Did she survive?”
Victoria laughed softly.
It was not amused.
“Depends what you call surviving.”
Clara glanced at Adrian.
His expression hardened.
Daniel asked, “Where is she?”
Victoria’s hands tightened around her coffee cup.
“She spent eleven months in neurological rehabilitation.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“She had to relearn how to speak. How to walk. She never finished college. She never became the person she was supposed to become.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I am.”
“Your father paid mine three million dollars.”
“I found out last night.”
“My father took almost all of it.”
Daniel looked up.
“What?”
“He said it was needed for her medical care.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Some was. A lot wasn’t.”
“Where is Rebecca now?”
Victoria looked out the window.
“She died six years ago.”
Daniel broke.
Clara saw it happen even from across the street.
His shoulders folded inward.
His hand covered his mouth.
Victoria watched him cry.
Then she leaned forward.
“I knew exactly who you were when we met.”
Daniel slowly looked up.
May you like
Victoria’s face had become cold.
“I knew before our first date.”
