Chapter 13 - My Mother on the List
I did not accuse Mom immediately.
That was growth.
Old Avery would have walked into the apartment with the document in one hand and anger in the other.
Instead I sat across from her and said, "Julian says you helped Dad."
Mom closed her eyes.
"Yes."
I laughed once.
Growth had limits.
"Doing what?"
"Moving copies. Delivering envelopes. Calling families."
"You were part of the Black Ledger operation?"
"No. I was part of getting people out of it."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you were nineteen when Thomas died. You had already lost your father. I wasn't going to hand you his enemies too."
"You handed me eight years of ignorance."
"And eight years of being alive."
That shut me up.
Mom reached into a drawer and removed an old martial arts belt.
Dad's black belt.
She cut the stitching with scissors.
Inside was a narrow strip of microfilm.
I stared.
"Seriously?"
Mom gave me a tired look.
"Your father watched too many spy movies."
For the first time in days, I laughed.
The microfilm contained Harbor Fund beneficiary records and one handwritten map.
Warehouse Nine.
St. Agnes.
Whitmore Memorial.
And one location we had not seen before.
LAKE FOREST - MORETTI ESTATE.
Dominic looked offended when I showed him.
"My house?"
Vanessa said, "Technically, your mother's old house."
A hidden safe sat behind the library fireplace.
Dominic had never known it existed.
The combination was not a number.
It was a sequence of martial arts belt ranks.
Dad's humor.
Inside was a ledger fragment and an audio recorder.
Carlo Moretti's voice filled the library.
"Thomas, Celeste is moving faster than we thought. Harbor money is secondary. She's protecting the exposure records. If those become public, Whitmore loses the hospital network."
Dad answered.
"Then we go public."
Carlo said, "Not yet. Julian isn't safe. Neither is Linda."
Vanessa covered her mouth.
Her brother had been part of this eight years ago.
The recording continued.
Dad: "Dominic needs to know."
Carlo: "My son thinks power makes him safe. He isn't ready to learn what power costs."
Dominic looked down.
Then a third voice entered.
Female.
Celeste.
"Thomas, you're wasting everyone's time."
We all froze.
The recording became muffled.
Carlo shouted.
A gunshot.
Then Dad's voice, low and furious.
"Celeste, if Carlo dies, Dominic will burn your family to the ground."
Celeste laughed.
"Only if Dominic ever learns who killed him."
The file ended.
Dominic stood perfectly still.
His father had supposedly died from a heart attack two years after Halcyon.
I thought about the moment Vanessa raised her hand and my body remembered a version of me my mind had abandoned. Maybe the fighter had not come back to drag me into the past. Maybe she had come back because I finally needed her in the present.
"Then don't take it back. Build a different one. But don't let grief make the decision forever."
"Maybe I don't want that life back."
I looked away. She was right again.
"Also because every gym smelled like him."
"I quit because we needed money."
She said, "Thomas hated that you quit competition because of him."
I stared at her until she laughed, then coughed. The cough ended the joke. I poured her water.
"Those things can overlap."
"I was grieving."
"You were nineteen and dramatic."
"You what?"
"I know. I took it out of the donation box."
I looked at the worn black fabric. "I almost did after he died."
Mom smiled faintly. "Because your father knew you would never throw it away."
"Why the belt?" I asked. "Why hide the microfilm there?"
Later, Mom and I sat alone in Dominic's kitchen while everyone else argued about lawyers in the next room.
According to the recording in his own wall, Celeste Whitmore may have killed him six years earlier.
---
The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.
May you like
If you enjoyed the story, bookmark my site: https://vibe.treeiq.biz
New stories are posted daily, so check back for updates.
