Chapter 5 - VICTORIA’S OFFER
Victoria requested to speak with me from jail.
At first, I refused.
Then Rebecca said, “People like Victoria don’t ask for conversations unless they think they still have leverage.”
So I agreed.
We met in a secure interview room separated by thick glass.
Victoria entered wearing a gray detention uniform.
Without makeup, designer clothes, or diamonds, she looked smaller.
But not weaker.
Her eyes remained sharp.
Calculating.
She sat and lifted the telephone.
I did the same.
“You look tired,” she said.
“You look exactly where you belong.”
A faint smile touched her lips.
“Anger doesn’t suit you, Daniel.”
“You tortured my daughter.”
“I corrected her behavior.”
My hand tightened around the receiver.
“Do you understand that you may spend decades in prison?”
“Only if Lily testifies.”
“She will.”
Victoria tilted her head.
“You sound very confident.”
“What do you want?”
“To save your life.”
I said nothing.
She leaned closer to the glass.
“Marcus is going to kill you.”
“Marcus already tried.”
“The aircraft was only one option.”
Her casual tone made my skin crawl.
“You knew about the sabotage.”
“Of course.”
“Then you admit you were involved.”
“You can’t use this conversation in court. My attorney made sure of that.”
Rebecca had warned me not to react to legal claims made by a manipulator.
“Why would Marcus kill me now? You no longer benefit.”
“Because he thinks you have the ledger.”
“What ledger?”
Victoria studied my expression.
Then she smiled.
“You truly don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“For fifteen years, Marcus kept records of every politician, executive, judge, and banker he paid. The ledger proves where hundreds of millions of dollars went.”
“And you think I have it?”
“Lily does.”
A chill moved through me.
Victoria continued.
“She took it from my closet.”
“Lily said she found insurance documents.”
“She found more than that.”
“Where is it?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
I stared at her.
“Why was Marcus’s ledger in your closet?”
“Because I stole it from him.”
For the first time, her confidence faltered slightly.
“Marcus and I were going to use your company to move money overseas. But I realized I didn’t need him once I married you. The ledger was insurance.”
“You planned to betray him.”
“I planned to survive.”
“You married me while you were still married to him.”
“Technically, yes.”
“You poisoned me.”
“Only enough to make you dependent.”
“You had my aircraft sabotaged.”
“That was Marcus’s idea.”
“You arranged a twenty-five-million-dollar insurance policy.”
“That was practical.”
I looked at the woman who had slept beside me for six months.
There was no remorse in her.
Only irritation that the plan had failed.
“What did you intend to do to Lily?”
Victoria’s expression cooled.
“She was supposed to attend a residential treatment facility.”
“Against her will?”
“She would have been declared unstable.”
“And after I died?”
“She would have remained there until she turned eighteen. By then, the company and the estate would have been settled.”
“What if she kept talking?”
Victoria did not answer.
She didn’t need to.
I set the receiver down for a second because my hand had begun shaking.
When I lifted it again, she said, “Marcus believes Lily hid the ledger somewhere connected to Emily.”
My late wife.
The cemetery message suddenly made sense.
“He will search every place she loved,” Victoria continued. “Your old house. The lake cabin. The memorial foundation.”
“Why tell me?”
“Because I want protection.”
“For what?”
“I give you Marcus, the ledger, and every person he paid. In exchange, you persuade the prosecutor to reduce my charges.”
I almost laughed.
“You think you can bargain after what you did?”
“I think you want Lily alive.”
She had me there.
Not legally.
Emotionally.
“What proof do you have?”
Victoria gave me an address.
An abandoned house near the coast.
“Marcus owns it through a corporation. There is a hidden room beneath the garage.”
“Is he there now?”
“No. But his records may be.”
“Why didn’t the police find this?”
“Because Marcus killed the only attorney who knew about it.”
I watched her face carefully.
“How many people have you helped him kill?”
She smiled again.
“You’re asking the wrong questions.”
The visit ended ten minutes later.
Detective Foster arranged a search warrant for the coastal property.
Inside the hidden room, investigators discovered weapons, counterfeit passports, cash, and photographs of dozens of people.
There were surveillance images of Lily going back more than a year.
Before I had even met Victoria.
Their plan had begun long before our wedding.
I had not been chosen by chance.
My company, Mercer Global, managed infrastructure projects across Asia, Europe, and North America. Our contracts provided access to shipping ports, construction funds, and international banking systems.
Marcus wanted the company.
Victoria was his doorway.
Among the photographs was one of Emily.
It had been taken outside the hospital during her cancer treatment seven years earlier.
That discovery changed everything.
“Why were they watching Emily?” I demanded.
Detective Foster had no immediate answer.
The investigators searched archived company records.
Marcus Vale had once tried to invest in Mercer Global through a private fund.
Emily, who had been an attorney before becoming ill, discovered irregularities and advised me to reject the deal.
At the time, we believed Marcus was merely hiding debt.
We had not known his fund was laundering money.
Emily had blocked him.
Years later, he sent Victoria to finish what he started.
The revelation filled me with a different kind of grief.
Even after death, Emily’s courage had protected us.
Lily remembered something when I told her.
“Mom had a blue journal.”
“What journal?”
“She kept it in the lake cabin. She wrote notes about your company sometimes.”
I had not visited the cabin since Emily died.
It sat four hours north of the city, surrounded by woods and a frozen lake during winter.
“Could the ledger be there?” Rebecca asked.
Lily looked uncertain.
“When I found Victoria’s folder, there was a black flash drive inside. I got scared and hid it.”
“Where?”
“In Mom’s journal.”
Marcus believed Lily had taken a physical ledger.
In reality, she had taken a flash drive.
“Did Victoria see you leave with it?”
“No. But she realized it was missing.”
That was when the worst abuse began.
The police wanted to retrieve the drive immediately.
A tactical team traveled to the cabin while Lily and I remained under protection.
They arrived shortly before sunset.
The front door was open.
Inside, furniture had been overturned. Drawers were emptied. Family photographs lay shattered on the floor.
Someone had searched the property.
But they had not found the blue journal.
Lily guided the officers by video call.
“Go to the upstairs bedroom,” she instructed. “There’s a loose board beneath the window seat.”
The officer removed the board.
Inside was the journal.
But the flash drive was gone.
Lily stared at the screen.
“I put it there. I know I did.”
A sound came from downstairs.
The tactical officer turned.
The video feed shook.
Gunfire erupted.
Then the screen went black.
We lost contact with the team for ninety seconds.
It felt like an hour.
When the signal returned, one officer had been wounded.
Marcus had been hiding inside the cabin.
He escaped through a tunnel leading from the basement to the lake.
And he had taken the flash drive.
At least, that was what he believed.
The officer carried the blue journal back to us that night.
The hidden compartment was empty.
Lily cried with frustration.
“I’m sorry.”
“This is not your fault.”
“But now he has everything.”
I opened Emily’s journal.
Most of the pages contained ordinary notes.
Medical appointments.
Letters to Lily.
Thoughts she never had the strength to say aloud.
Near the back, one page had been carefully cut away.
I ran my finger along the binding.
Something hard remained inside the spine.
Rebecca used a small knife to open the fabric.
A second flash drive slid into her palm.
Lily stared.
Then she remembered.
“Mom used to tell me never to hide something important in only one place.”
The drive Lily stole from Victoria had been a decoy.
The real data had been copied and hidden inside Emily’s journal before her death.
Emily had known Marcus Vale might return someday.
She had left us the evidence needed to destroy him.
But Marcus did not know that.
May you like
He believed he had won.
And that false confidence gave us our first real advantage.
