Chapter 7 - What Camille’s Mother Knew
The hard drive contained more than financial records.
It contained scanned documents from nearly fifteen years earlier—emails, payment ledgers, property transfers, and a series of encrypted files that took federal analysts two days to open.
When they did, Meredith called Adrian immediately.
We met in a secure conference room downtown.
My daughters stayed with Luca in another room, making a fort out of office chairs and blankets.
Meredith placed an old photograph on the table.
A woman stood outside a city housing office holding a stack of folders. She had dark hair, tired eyes, and a small silver pendant around her neck.
My breath caught.
“My mother.”
Her name was Elena Ashford.
I remembered almost nothing about her, but I remembered that pendant. After she died, it had been placed in a plastic bag with my belongings. I wore it every day until Travis sold it during one of his “bad months.”
“She worked in municipal housing compliance,” Meredith said. “She found evidence that a redevelopment fund was being drained through fake relocation programs.”
“Lennox Urban Group?”
“Yes. But at the time, it was operating under another name.”
My hands went cold.
“What happened to her?”
Meredith looked at Adrian.
Then back at me.
“Officially, she died in a car accident.”
I felt the room disappear.
“Unofficially?”
“We believe the brakes were tampered with.”
Silence.
My mother had not simply left me with nothing.
She had been trying to stop something.
And someone had killed her for it.
“Why would Victor care about me?” I whispered.
“Because he believed your mother made copies of the records,” Meredith said. “He never found them. When your insurance trust account became accessible, he used Travis to search for information connected to it.”
I thought of Travis insisting on going through old boxes. His sudden interest in my childhood records. The way he called my mother “a nobody.”
“He was looking for evidence,” I said.
“Yes,” Adrian replied.
“And when he didn’t find it, Victor made him hurt me?”
Adrian’s voice was low. “Travis made his own choices.”
“But Victor gave him a reason.”
The distinction barely mattered.
That evening, I sat alone in the apartment’s kitchen while the girls watched a cartoon in the living room.
Adrian came in quietly.
He placed a small velvet pouch on the counter.
“What is this?”
“Luca found it at a pawn shop across town.”
I opened it.
Inside was my mother’s silver pendant.
For several seconds, I could not breathe.
I pressed it to my chest.
“She wore this every day,” I whispered.
Adrian said nothing.
That was kind.
He understood that grief did not always need answers. Sometimes it only needed space.
“Why are you helping me?” I finally asked.
He looked toward the living room, where my daughters laughed at something on television.
“At first, because Travis was connected to a threat against my company.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
He stepped closer, but not too close.
“Because I watched you in that supermarket,” he said. “You were terrified, but your first thought was your daughters. And they were terrified, but their first thought was you.”
His voice softened.
“I know what it is like to grow up believing love is supposed to hurt. I know what it takes to break that belief.”
I looked down at my mother’s pendant.
“Victor is going to come after us again.”
“Yes.”
“And you can’t promise he won’t.”
“No.”
“Then what can you promise?”
Adrian held my gaze.
“I can promise you will not face him alone.”
His phone buzzed.
A message appeared from an unknown number.
A video file.
Adrian opened it.
Travis sat in a dim room, bruised and frightened, staring into the camera.
“Camille,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Victor has the girls’ school schedule. He has people watching Moretti Tower. He says if Adrian doesn’t bring the original files to the old Lakeshore warehouse tomorrow night—”
The screen went black.
Then Victor Lennox appeared.
He smiled.
May you like
“Bring Adrian,” he said. “Bring the evidence. Or we begin with the children.”
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