Chapter 6: Derek
Derek Voss was not what I expected.
I had built a version of him in my mind over the years — the son my parents had wanted me to marry, the other half of the arrangement, the face of everything I had refused.
In my imagination he was polished and cold, someone who had benefited from the deal and never looked back.
The man who opened the door of a modest apartment on the east side of the city was thirty-eight, tired around the eyes, and wearing a flannel shirt with a coffee stain near the pocket.
"You must be Claire," he said.
"Come in."
Nathan and I sat on one side of his kitchen table.
Derek sat on the other.
He poured coffee without asking if we wanted it and set the cups down and looked at Nathan.
"You told her everything?" he asked.
"Yes," Nathan said.
Derek nodded slowly.
"Good." He wrapped his hands around his own cup.
"I want you to know — I never agreed to what our parents planned.
I was twenty-two when I found out what the arrangement was supposed to be.
I told my father I wouldn't do it."
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He said it wasn't my choice." Derek looked at the table.
"My father wasn't a good man, Claire.
What yours did to him — cooperating with investigators, letting him take the full sentence — that was a betrayal.
But my father wasn't innocent.
He just wasn't the only guilty one."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"In prison."
Derek was quiet for a moment.
"He d*ed there.
Four years into his sentence.
Heart failure." He looked up.
"I was twenty-six.
I had just started putting together what I could find about what really happened.
About the deal your father made.
About the audit that was supposed to expose both of them."
"About Nathan," I said.
"About Nathan," he confirmed.
He looked at Nathan directly.
"I'm sorry.
What happened to you — I didn't know about it until three years ago.
When I found the same email chain your wife's mother had."
"You have a copy?" Nathan asked.
"I have the original server records," Derek said.
"My father kept everything.
He was paranoid.
Turns out that paranoia was the most useful thing he ever did." He stood and went to the counter, where a laptop sat open.
He brought it to the table and turned it toward us.
The screen showed a document archive.
Hundreds of files, organized by date.
"This goes back fifteen years," Derek said.
"Wire transfers.
Correspondence.
Recorded phone calls — my father recorded everything, which was itself probably illegal, but here we are." He scrolled to a folder labeled with a date from eleven years ago.
"This one is the week before Nathan's accident."
He opened it.
Three audio files.
He clicked the first one.
A voice I didn't recognize spoke first.
Then a voice I did.
My father's voice, clear and unhurried, said: *The analyst is a complication.
Handle it before Thursday.
Make sure it doesn't come back to the firm.*
I had heard my father give instructions my entire childhood.
He had a particular tone for it — calm, final, as if the matter were already settled.
He used that same tone now, on this recording, discussing a human being like an item on a to-do list.
Nathan's hand found my arm under the table.
"That's enough," he said quietly.
To Derek: "Is this what you're taking to the federal investigator?"
"This and more," Derek said.
"I have a meeting scheduled for three weeks from now.
I wanted to give you both time to prepare." He looked at me.
"Your father will be named.
There's no way around it.
I thought you deserved to know before it became public."
"Thank you," I said.
It was a strange thing to say.
It was the only thing I had.
Derek closed the laptop.
He picked up his coffee cup, then set it down again without drinking.
"I want to ask you something," he said.
"And you don't have to answer."
"Go ahead."
"Are you going to warn him?
Your father?"
I looked at Nathan.
He didn't move.
"No," I said.
Derek looked at me for a moment.
Then he nodded once, slowly, as if something had been settled.
"There's one more thing," he said.
"Something I didn't tell Nathan when I contacted him." He reached into the folder on the table and removed a single sheet of paper.
"My father wrote a letter before he d*ed.
He gave it to his attorney with instructions to hold it for ten years and then release it." He slid the paper across the table toward me.
"The ten years were up last month."
I looked at the letter.
It was addressed to me.
My name, in a stranger's handwriting, at the top of a page I had never seen before.
*Dear Claire,*
*If you are reading this, then enough time has passed that the truth can no longer hurt the people it was meant to protect.
I am writing to tell you that your husband is an honest man.
He was the only honest man in the room.
Everything that was done to him was done because your father was afraid of exactly that.*
*I was not innocent.
But I was not alone in my guilt.
I hope this letter finds you well.
I hope you were happy.*
*— Vincent Voss*
I folded the letter carefully and put it in my bag.
May you like
Outside Derek's window, the city moved past, indifferent and ordinary.
My father didn't know yet that three separate people were now holding pieces of the same truth, and that all three pieces fit together perfectly.
