Chapter 7
The call from the detective came two weeks after New Year’s.
Detective Carter.
No relation to Olivia, thank God.
“Daniel? It’s Detective Carter. We got the search warrants back for Olivia and Chloe’s phones. You need to sit down for this.”
I sat down at the kitchen table.
My hands were already shaking.
“What did you find?”
“Texts,” he said. “Hundreds of them. Between Olivia and Chloe. Starting the day after you married her.”
I held my breath.
“They talked about how to spend your money first. How to max out your cards before you noticed. Then… it got worse.”
“Worse how?”
“Three months ago, Olivia started researching ‘untraceable poisons’ online. She and Chloe talked about how to make your death look like a heart attack. Or a car crash. They even contacted a guy online who said he could sell them something that wouldn’t show up on an autopsy.”
My blood turned to ice.
“Turns out the guy was an undercover FBI agent,” Detective Carter said. “He’s been building a case against them for months. The life insurance policy was the final piece. They were going to make their move the week you came home from New York. If you’d been two days later….”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t have to.
If I’d come home when I was supposed to.
If I hadn’t closed that deal early.
I would be dead.
And my girls would be alone with Olivia.
“Daniel? You still there?”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice was barely a whisper. “I’m here.”
“The DA is filing charges today. Conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Multiple counts of child endangerment. Fraud. Forgery. They’re looking at twenty-five to life, minimum. No plea deals. The DA wants to make an example out of them.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
I hung up the phone.
I sat there for a long time.
Staring at the wall.
I could have died.
I could have left my girls alone.
With that monster.
“Daddy?”
I looked up.
Lily and Mia were standing in the kitchen doorway.
They were holding hands.
Mia had her rabbit with her.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked, her voice small.
I stood up.
I walked over to them.
I knelt down, pulled them both into my arms.
I held them so tight.
“I’m okay,” I said, kissing the tops of their heads. “I’m more than okay. I’ve got you two. That’s all that matters.”
That afternoon, we built a fort in the living room.
We used every couch cushion, every blanket, every pillow in the house.
We crawled inside.
Mia made me wear a plastic tiara.
Lily drew pictures of all of us inside the fort.
“Daddy’s the king,” Mia said, patting my head. “Lily’s the princess. I’m the baby princess. And we live in the castle forever and ever.”
“Forever and ever,” Lily agreed, coloring a big rainbow over our stick figures.
I looked at them.
Happy.
Safe.
Laughing.
I’d almost lost this.
I’d almost lost everything.
I vowed right then and there that I would spend the rest of my life making it up to them.
Every single day.
I would be there for every lost tooth.
Every school play.
Every scraped knee.
Every bad dream.
Every good day and every bad day.
May you like
I would never leave them alone again.
Never.
