Chapter 7
I stared at her for a full minute, my mouth hanging open, Lily stirring in my arms, half-asleep.
My grandmother.
Eleanor Voss.
The woman I’d been told died in a car crash when I was 12 years old.
The woman my father had never spoken of, not once, in all the years after her “death.”
The woman who was supposed to be dead was standing on my front porch, holding a small leather handbag, looking at me like she’d been waiting to meet me my whole life.
“Who are you?” Ethan said, stepping up behind me, his arm tight around my waist, his voice sharp and protective. “How did you get past security?”
The woman turned her gaze to Ethan, her smile still soft, but her eyes sharp, taking in everything.
“Your security team knows who I am, dear,” she said, her voice calm and steady. “I spoke to Mr. Voss and Ms. Chen on the phone last night. They told me I could come. I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet my granddaughter. And my great-granddaughter.”
She looked down at Lily, her eyes softening, and held out a hand, like she wanted to touch her, but thought better of it.
“May I come in?” she said, looking back at me. “We have a lot to talk about. And I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say. Especially about Helen.”
I hesitated, glancing at Ethan, who nodded slightly, his eyes still cautious.
I stepped aside, letting her in.
She walked into the living room, sat down on the couch, set her handbag on her lap, and looked around the room, her eyes lingering on the photos of me and Ethan and Lily on the mantel.
“You have a beautiful home,” she said, looking back at me. “A beautiful family. Arthur would have been so happy to see this. He talked about you all the time, you know. Even when you weren’t speaking. Even when he was angry. He loved you more than anything in the world.”
My throat tightened.
“Why did everyone think you were dead?” I said, sitting down across from her, Lily still in my arms, Ethan sitting next to me, his hand on my knee. “Why did you leave? Why didn’t you come find me sooner?”
Eleanor sighed, a long, heavy sound, and reached into her handbag, pulling out a thick stack of old letters, tied with a blue ribbon.
“Because Helen made me leave,” she said, her voice soft but full of anger. “30 years ago, when Helen first married your father, she found out I was going to contest the prenup she’d tricked him into signing. She was going to steal half his fortune the second they divorced, and I wasn’t going to let her. So she threatened me. She said if I didn’t fake my own death and leave the country, never to come back, she’d kill you. You were only two years old, Clara. She said she’d make it look like an accident. She said no one would ever suspect her. And I knew she meant it. I’d already seen what she was capable of. So I left. I faked the car crash. I moved to a small town in Switzerland. I’ve been there ever since. Watching. Waiting. Making sure you were safe. Waiting for Helen to make a mistake big enough that I could come home and help you take her down for good.”
I stared at her, my mind reeling.
All those years I’d thought my grandmother was dead.
All those years I’d missed her, wondered what she was like, wished I had someone from my dad’s side of the family to talk to.
And she’d been alive the whole time.
Hiding.
Because of Helen.
“Why are you here now?” I said, my voice shaking a little. “Helen is in prison. She’s never getting out. It’s over.”
Eleanor shook her head, her face turning serious.
“It’s not over, Clara,” she said, her voice sharp now. “Helen may be in prison, but she still has people working for her. People who owe her favors. People who will do anything she asks, even from behind bars. And she’s not the only one who wants to hurt you. There’s Brooke. There’s Tom. There are people inside Voss who don’t want a 27-year-old former Marine running the company. People who will use every secret they can find to take you down. And the biggest secret of all is one I’ve been carrying for 30 years. One that could destroy everything you’ve worked so hard to build.”
She pushed the stack of letters across the coffee table toward me.
“These are letters Helen wrote to her brother Tom, starting 30 years ago, up until a week before she kidnapped Lily,” she said. “I’ve had people collecting them for years. They prove everything. How she manipulated your father. How she turned him against you. How she planned his murder 10 years before she actually did it. How she used Brooke to help her. How she paid off judges, cops, reporters, everyone who could help her get what she wanted. But there’s one more thing. Something even bigger.”
She paused, looking at me, her eyes full of sadness.
“Brooke isn’t your father’s daughter, Clara,” she said, her voice soft. “She’s Tom’s daughter. Helen got pregnant by her own brother when she was 19, right before she met your father. She married your father knowing she was already pregnant, let him raise Brooke as his own, then used that secret to blackmail Tom into helping her with everything she did for the last 25 years. Every lie. Every crime. Every terrible thing she’s ever done—Tom helped her, because if he didn’t, she’d tell the whole world he’d fathered his own sister’s child. And Brooke has known the truth since she was 16. She’s been just as much a part of Helen’s schemes as Tom has. She’s not the poor, manipulated sister she’s been pretending to be. She’s been helping Helen plan to take Voss from you for years. She’s the one who forged your father’s letter. She’s the one who found Jesse Cole and paid him to lie. She’s the one who helped Helen kidnap Lily. And right now, she’s planning to take Helen’s place. She thinks she deserves everything Helen was supposed to get. And she’s not going to stop until she gets it.”
I stared at her, my mind going blank.
Brooke.
My sister.
The girl I’d grown up with, the girl I’d spent 25 years protecting, the girl I’d paid thousands of dollars for, the girl I’d thought was just scared of Helen, just a victim of her manipulation.
She’d been working with Helen the whole time.
She’d forged the letter.
She’d paid the witness.
She’d helped kidnap Lily.
And now she wanted to take over.
I felt sick to my stomach.
I’d felt sorry for her.
I’d thought about forgiving her, about helping her get away from Helen, about giving her a new start.
And she’d been just as bad as Helen the whole time.
“Where is she now?” Ethan said, his voice tight with rage, standing up from the couch. “I’ll go to the police myself. She helped kidnap Lily. She belongs in prison right next to Helen.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“Brooke left the country last night,” she said. “She took all the money Helen had hidden in her personal accounts, almost $5 million, and flew to a country with no extradition treaty with the US. She’s already started talking to the press. She’s giving interviews, saying Helen was innocent, that you framed her, that you forged all the evidence, that you killed your father and Helen took the fall to protect you. She’s trying to build support, to get people to believe her, so she can come back in a few years and take over Voss, claiming she’s the rightful heir, that you’re a murderer and a fraud. And she has help. A group of senior Voss executives who don’t want you running the company. They’ve been secretly meeting with Brooke for months, planning a coup to take over the board, to fire you, to put Brooke in charge as a puppet they can control. The vote is in two weeks. If they win, you lose everything. Voss. Langford. All of it.”
I stood up, Lily still in my arms, my fear and sadness turning to cold, steady anger.
I was done being the victim.
I was done being surprised by my family’s cruelty.
If Brooke wanted a fight, I’d give her one.
If the Voss executives wanted to try to take the company my father had built for me, I’d destroy every single one of them.
“Okay,” I said, my voice steady, no trace of the scared girl I’d been a month before. “Let them try. Let Brooke tell all the lies she wants. Let the executives plan their coup. I’m not going anywhere. This company is mine. My father left it to me. And I’m not going to let a bunch of liars and thieves take it from me. Not now. Not ever.”
Eleanor smiled, a small, proud smile, and stood up, holding out her hand to me.
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” she said. “I didn’t just come here to tell you the truth, Clara. I came here to help you. I own 15% of Voss Holdings. Your father left it to me in his will, separate from yours. With my shares and yours, we control 66% of the company. The executives can vote all they want. They can’t win. Not against us. And I have friends all over the world. People who can find Brooke. People who can make sure she faces justice for what she did to you, to Lily, to our family. We’re going to win this, Clara. Together. The way your father always wanted us to.”
I took her hand, squeezing it tight, finally feeling like I had the family I’d always wanted.
A grandmother who loved me.
A husband who’d stand by me through anything.
A daughter who was my whole world.
We spent the next two weeks working nonstop, Eleanor, Sarah, Elias, and I, preparing for the board meeting, gathering evidence against the executives who were plotting against me, tracking Brooke’s movements overseas, building our case.
Ethan went back to active duty, but he took a desk job at the local base so he could be home every night with me and Lily, helping us however he could, being our rock when things got hard.
Marnie moved into the guest room for a while, helping with Lily, cooking us meals, making sure we ate and slept and didn’t work ourselves to death.
The day of the board meeting finally came.
We walked into the Voss boardroom together—me, Eleanor, Sarah, Elias—all of us dressed in sharp suits, ready for war.
The six executives who’d been plotting against me were already sitting around the table, their faces smug, like they thought they’d already won.
Brooke was there too, sitting at the far end of the table, wearing an expensive suit, her face cold and hard, no trace of the scared, crying sister I’d known.
She smiled when she saw me, a sharp, cruel smile.
“Hello, Clara,” she said, her voice loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “I was wondering if you’d have the guts to show up. You might as well save us all the time and just resign now. The votes are already counted. You’re fired. And I’m taking over as CEO of Voss Holdings. Just like Helen always planned.”
I didn’t say anything.
I just walked to the head of the table, sat down, and looked at each of the executives one by one, my face cold and steady.
“Before we vote,” I said, my voice loud and clear, echoing through the room. “I think you all should see this.”
I nodded at Sarah, who turned on the big screen at the end of the room.
On the screen, one by one, we played the recordings we’d obtained of each of the executives meeting with Brooke, talking about how they were going to steal Voss, how they were going to embezzle even more money than Richard had, how they were going to destroy my father’s legacy.
We showed the bank records proving they’d already started siphoning money into their own offshore accounts.
We showed the emails proving they’d helped Brooke spread the lies about me killing my father.
We showed everything.
One by one, the smug smiles fell off the executives’ faces, replaced by fear and panic.
Brooke’s face went white, her hands shaking on the table.
When the last recording finished playing, the room was dead silent.
I stood up, looking at each of them again.
“You’re all fired,” I said, my voice sharp and final. “Effective immediately. Security is outside. They’ll escort you out. And don’t worry—we’ve already turned all this evidence over to the SEC and the FBI. You’ll all be in prison by the end of the month. Just like Helen.”
The security team walked in, escorted the shocked, protesting executives out of the room, leaving just me, Eleanor, Sarah, Elias, and Brooke.
Brooke stood up, her face twisted with rage, pointing a finger at me.
“You think this is over?” she screamed. “I have money! I have friends! I’ll come back! I’ll destroy you! I’ll take Lily! I’ll—”
She didn’t get to finish.
Two FBI agents walked into the room, holding an arrest warrant.
“Brooke Carter?” one of them said, stepping toward her. “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, fraud, kidnapping, and racketeering. We have an extradition order. You’re coming back to the US to face trial. And don’t worry—we have more than enough evidence to put you away for the rest of your life, right next to your mother.”
Brooke stared at them, her mouth hanging open, all the fight draining out of her in a second.
The agents cuffed her, led her out of the room, screaming and crying, and the door clicked shut behind her.
I let out a long, shaky breath, sitting back down in the big leather chair at the head of the table.
It was really over.
Helen was in prison.
Brooke was in prison.
The corrupt executives were gone.
Voss was mine.
Langford was mine.
My family was safe.
Eleanor reached across the table, squeezing my hand, her eyes full of pride.
“Your father would be so proud of you,” she said, her voice soft. “So, so proud.”
I smiled, a real, happy smile, the first one in months.
I was wrong again, of course.
Because the hardest fight of all was still waiting for me.
The fight to forgive myself for everything that had happened.
The fight to give Lily the normal, happy childhood she deserved.
The fight to finally be free of the past.
May you like
And it would start with a phone call, three days later, from the warden of the maximum security prison where Helen was being held.
“Ms. Hale?” he said, his voice serious. “Helen Langford is asking to see you. She says it’s a matter of life and death. She says she has information about someone who is planning to hurt you and your daughter. And she says she’ll only tell you if you come see her. Alone.”
