Chapter 6 - My Father's Partner
Edward Kane had been my father's closest business partner.
Then, when I was nineteen, they had a bitter falling-out.
My father never explained why.
Edward disappeared from our lives.
Now his name was connected to money stolen from me.
Investigators located him in Arizona.
He was seventy-one.
Retired.
When they showed him the records, he admitted knowing Margaret.
Not recently.
Thirty years earlier.
My father, Edward, and Margaret had all known one another.
The revelation felt impossible.
Margaret had not discovered me six years ago.
She had known who I was almost my entire life.
Edward eventually agreed to speak with me.
Video call.
He looked old.
Ashamed.
“Your father should have told you.”
“Told me what?”
“Margaret tried to defraud Ashford Development before you were born.”
I stared.
“How?”
“She worked in accounts payable for one of our contractors.”
Margaret had manipulated invoices.
My father discovered it.
She was fired.
No criminal charges were filed because the contractor wanted to avoid scandal.
Margaret blamed my father.
Years later, she resurfaced.
Edward had gambling debts.
Margaret used them.
He gave her internal information about Ashford holdings.
In return, she helped conceal some of his financial problems.
“Did my father know?”
“Eventually.”
“Is that why you stopped being partners?”
Edward nodded.
My father had forced him out.
Margaret never forgot.
So when my father died and I inherited his estate, she saw opportunity and revenge in the same package.
Daniel wasn't simply sent after a wealthy woman.
He was sent after Thomas Ashford's daughter.
My marriage had been a six-year extension of a grudge that began before I was born.
I should have felt crushed.
Instead, I felt angry.
Not at Daniel.
Not even Margaret.
At the sheer arrogance of people who believed my life existed as a continuation of their old war.
“I wasn't part of your feud,” I told Edward.
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
He looked down.
I ended the call.
Edward cooperated.
His testimony helped recover another portion of the money.
But Margaret still had one card left.
She claimed my father had stolen from her first.
Her attorney produced documents suggesting Thomas Ashford had taken intellectual property from a company connected to Margaret's late husband.
Rebecca reviewed them.
Fake.
Not sophisticated fake.
Old fake.
Altered dates.
Mismatched typefaces.
Signatures copied from unrelated documents.
Margaret had spent decades rewriting history until even she appeared to believe it.
That realization made me pity her.
Briefly.
May you like
Then I remembered the slap she laughed at.
Pity did not require access.
