Chapter 7: The Other Side of the Secret
Elena did not answer immediately.
She looked at Lily sleeping on the sofa.
The rise and fall of her small chest.
The blanket tucked up to her chin.
"How did you get this number?" she said.
"Nicole had it," Daniel said.
"She kept a file.
Contact information for people connected to David.
She was thorough."
"She kept a file on me."
"On several people.
You were near the top."
Elena stood and moved to the doorway, keeping one eye on Lily.
"What do you want, Mr.
Marsh?"
"I want my son," he said.
"That part is simple.
Nicole has been keeping Marcus from me for four years.
I've been paying for that apartment — the one she told David she gave up — because that was the arrangement.
I stay quiet, I pay, I see Marcus twice a month.
That was the deal."
"And now?"
"Now she walked out of a cancelled wedding and she's going to need a new arrangement.
And I've decided I'm done making arrangements that don't include my name on a legal document." His voice stayed level.
"I need someone who can speak to David.
Someone he trusts.
I'm not asking you to take my side.
I'm asking you to tell him that I'm not the enemy here."
"Why would David trust anything that comes through me right now?" Elena said.
"Nicole just spent twenty minutes telling him I staged everything."
"I know what she wrote in that card."
Elena went still.
"You know what was in the card."
"She read it to me before she sealed it.
She wanted my opinion." A pause.
"I told her it was a mistake.
She sent it anyway."
"You advised her."
"I've been advising her for four years.
That's the problem.
She doesn't listen until it's too late and then she looks for someone else to blame." He exhaled.
"I'm not calling you because I like the situation, Elena.
I'm calling you because you are the only person in that house tonight who has no reason to lie."
Elena looked at the hallway.
David's voice had stopped.
She heard footsteps.
"I have to go," she said.
"I know.
Think about what I said." A pause.
"One more thing.
Nicole didn't just keep a file of contact numbers.
She kept records.
Messages, dates, financial transfers.
She used them to keep me in line.
I have copies of everything.
If David wants to understand the full picture — all of it, not just tonight — I can provide that."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because Marcus deserves a father who isn't ashamed of him," Daniel said.
"And because I am very tired of being managed."
He ended the call.
David appeared in the doorway.
"Who was that?"
Elena looked at him.
"Daniel Marsh."
David's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes shifted.
"He called you."
"He got my number from Nicole's files.
She kept records on people connected to you."
David came into the room and sat in the chair across from her.
He looked at Lily for a moment.
"What did he say?"
Elena told him.
All of it — the apartment arrangement, the file, the card being read aloud before it was sealed, the copies of records.
David listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"She read the card to him," he said.
"Yes."
"She was coordinating with him while she was still in the building."
"Yes."
David leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"She didn't panic when I confronted her.
She was buying time."
"She was waiting to see which way it went," Elena said.
"If you'd believed her — if you'd sent me away and accepted her explanation — she would have called Daniel tonight and told him the arrangement was continuing."
"And when I didn't believe her—"
"She activated the backup."
David looked at his hands.
"She had a backup plan for losing me."
"She had a backup plan for everything."
Lily stirred on the sofa.
Her eyes opened halfway, found Elena, and closed again.
David watched her.
"The records Daniel mentioned," he said quietly.
"If they show what he says they show — financial transfers, dates, messages — that's not just a personal matter anymore.
That's potentially fraud.
She was living in my house.
I paid for everything.
If she was also receiving money from him under a private arrangement—"
"Talk to your solicitor," Elena said.
"Tonight."
"I will." He stood.
"Elena.
I need to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly."
"All right."
"When Daniel called you — when he said he thought you both wanted the same thing — what did you think he meant?"
Elena met his eyes.
"I think he meant we both want Nicole to stop using people as instruments." She paused.
"But I don't trust him.
He was part of this too.
He paid to stay hidden.
That's not a man with clean hands."
David nodded slowly.
"No," he said.
"It's not."
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His solicitor, calling back.
He stepped into the hallway.
Elena sat back in her chair.
Through the window, the driveway was empty now.
The last of the guests' cars had gone.
The house was very quiet.
She picked up her own phone and looked at Daniel Marsh's number.
Then she opened her messages and typed a single line to her sister two hundred miles away:
*I need you to come.
Bring the folder I gave you last year.
The one I told you to keep safe.*
She sent it and put the phone face-down on her knee.
There was one more piece to this.
May you like
One piece that nobody in this house knew about yet — not David, not Daniel Marsh, not Nicole.
Elena had kept her own records.
