Chapter 7 - THE NIGHT ARTHUR HARRINGTON DIED
"Elias."
Kiora's voice trembled.
"Tell me he's lying."
Elias looked at Daniel.
Then at her.
"Not here."
Her expression shattered.
"Not here?"
"Kiora."
"My father died of a heart attack."
Elias said nothing.
Daniel laughed softly.
"You poor thing."
Agent Morris ordered him to stop talking.
He didn't.
"Everyone lied to you."
Kiora stepped toward Elias.
"Did my father have a heart attack?"
"Yes."
Relief flashed across her face.
Then Elias added.
"But that wasn't the whole story."
Kiora closed her eyes.
"What happened?"
Elias looked twenty years older.
"Someone tampered with his medication."
Her eyes opened.
"What?"
"We discovered it after his death."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Arthur made me promise."
"He was dead."
"He left instructions."
Kiora shook her head.
"You chose his instructions over me?"
"I chose keeping you alive."
The room went silent again.
Daniel's smile disappeared.
Elias continued.
"Arthur believed whoever targeted him would target you if they knew you had inherited his investigation."
Kiora looked at Daniel.
"Was it him?"
"We couldn't prove it."
Daniel laughed.
"Because I didn't do it."
Elias turned.
"But you knew about it."
Daniel stopped laughing.
That tiny reaction was enough.
Agent Morris noticed.
"So did Richard Harrow."
Elias continued.
"Arthur met Richard three hours before he died."
Vanessa's face changed.
"My father?"
"Yes."
"You're lying."
"I have the parking records."
Vanessa stepped backward.
Daniel looked furious.
"Shut up, Vanessa."
She turned on him.
"You said there was nothing connecting Dad."
Daniel's eyes widened.
Too late.
Agent Morris slowly looked between them.
Kiora did too.
Vanessa realized what she had said.
"Wait."
Agent Morris spoke.
"Connecting your father to what?"
Vanessa said nothing.
Daniel swore under his breath.
The search continued until almost dawn.
Computers were seized.
Phones were taken.
Documents were boxed.
But Daniel wasn't arrested.
Not yet.
The evidence supported fraud.
It didn't yet prove conspiracy surrounding Arthur's death.
That made Daniel dangerous.
He walked out under attorney supervision at 5:12 a.m.
Before leaving, he stopped beside Kiora.
"This ends badly."
Elias stepped between them.
Daniel smiled.
"Not for me."
He walked away.
Kiora watched him disappear.
Then she turned to Elias.
"No more secrets."
"There are still things I don't know."
"Then tell me what you do."
Elias nodded.
Arthur's final day had begun with a phone call from Richard Harrow.
They met at a private club.
Arthur returned home angry.
He told Elias he finally had proof.
"Proof of what?"
Elias hesitated.
"That Harrington Holdings had been infiltrated."
"By Richard?"
"By someone close to you."
Kiora stared at him.
"Daniel?"
"Arthur never said."
"Then who?"
"He planned to tell me the following morning."
"But he died."
"At 2:17 a.m."
Kiora sat down.
She remembered that night.
The phone call.
The hospital.
Her father's cold hand.
Something occurred to her.
"Who found him?"
Elias looked away.
Kiora already knew.
"Daniel."
Elias nodded.
Her stomach dropped.
Daniel had always said he'd stopped by unexpectedly.
But now nothing about that night felt accidental.
"Was Vanessa there?"
"We don't know."
Kiora remembered something.
A smell.
A perfume.
She had noticed it in her father's bedroom after his death.
At the time she assumed it belonged to a nurse.
But she knew that fragrance now.
Vanessa wore it.
Every day.
Kiora stood.
"I need to go to my father's house."
Elias frowned.
"Why?"
"Because I think Vanessa was there."
The Harrington estate had remained mostly untouched.
Kiora couldn't bear to sell it.
They arrived shortly after sunrise.
Dust covered the furniture.
Elias disabled the alarm.
Kiora walked upstairs.
Her father's bedroom remained exactly as she remembered.
She opened drawers.
Closets.
Cabinets.
Nothing.
Then she noticed the old grandfather clock.
Arthur had loved mechanical puzzles.
As a child, Kiora used to hide candy inside a secret compartment behind the clock face.
She reached behind it.
Her fingers touched something.
A small digital recorder.
Elias stared.
Kiora pressed play.
Static.
Then her father's voice.
"If you're hearing this, Richard refused my offer."
Another voice answered.
Richard Harrow.
"You should have stayed out of our business."
Arthur laughed.
"You involved my daughter."
Kiora stopped breathing.
Then a third voice entered the recording.
A woman's voice.
Young.
Familiar.
"She's already involved."
Kiora's face went white.
Vanessa.
The recording continued.
Arthur spoke again.
"If anything happens to Kiora or that child, everything goes public."
Kiora stared at Elias.
"That child?"
She touched her stomach.
"This recording is six years old."
Elias looked equally confused.
Kiora hadn't been pregnant six years ago.
Then Arthur said one final sentence.
"The child Daniel abandoned deserves the truth."
Kiora froze.
May you like
Daniel had another child.
And somewhere, someone had spent six years making sure she never found out.
