Chapter 8
I stared at the phone for a long time after the warden hung up, my stomach twisting into a tight knot.
Helen.
Wanting to see me.
Alone.
Saying someone was planning to hurt me and Lily.
My first instinct was to say no.
To hang up, block the number, never think about her again.
She’d already taken so much from me.
My childhood.
My sense of safety.
My dad.
Almost my daughter.
Why would I give her even one more second of my time?
But then I thought about Lily.
About the way she’d cried in that cabin, scared and alone.
About the note Helen had left, about the knife at her throat.
If there was even a tiny chance someone was still planning to hurt her, I had to know.
I had to do everything I could to protect her.
Even if it meant seeing Helen again.
I told Ethan about the call that night, after Lily was asleep.
He was furious.
“Absolutely not,” he said, pacing the kitchen floor, his face tight with anger. “She’s lying. She just wants to get in your head, to hurt you, to manipulate you again. She’s got nothing. She’s just bitter because she’s in prison for the rest of her life. You’re not going. End of discussion.”
“I have to, Ethan,” I said, standing up, putting my hand on his arm to stop him pacing. “What if she’s telling the truth? What if there is someone out there who wants to hurt us? Someone we don’t know about? I can’t take that risk with Lily. I just can’t. I’ll go. I’ll take Sarah and two security guards with me. I won’t be alone. I won’t let her get to me. I’ll just listen to what she has to say, then leave. That’s it. I promise.”
Ethan stared at me for a long, heavy second, his jaw tight, then sighed, running a hand through his hair, the fight draining out of him.
“Okay,” he said, his voice soft. “Okay. But I’m going with you. I’m waiting right outside the visiting room. If she says one thing that upsets you, if she even looks at you wrong, I’m coming in there and getting you out. No arguments. Understood?”
“Understood,” I said, smiling, pulling him into a hug. “Thank you.”
The next morning, we drove to the maximum security prison three hours outside the city, Sarah and two security guards following behind us in another car.
The prison was cold and gray, surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire, the air thick with the smell of diesel and fear.
We checked in at the front desk, went through three separate security checks, and were led down a long, cold hallway to the visiting room.
Ethan, Sarah, and the guards waited in the small observation room behind the one-way glass, where they could see and hear everything that happened.
I sat down at the hard metal table in the middle of the visiting room, my hands folded in my lap, my heart hammering a little, and waited.
Five minutes later, the door on the other side of the room opened.
Two guards led Helen in.
She looked terrible.
Her hair was cut short, dull and gray, no longer the perfectly styled blonde she’d always been.
She was wearing a baggy orange prison jumpsuit, her hands cuffed in front of her, her face pale and gaunt, with dark circles under her eyes.
She looked old.
Broken.
Nothing like the powerful, cruel woman who’d ruled my life for 27 years.
She sat down across from me at the table, the guards standing by the door, and looked at me, her eyes filling with tears.
“Clara,” she said, her voice rough and hoarse, like she’d been smoking too much. “Thank you for coming. I didn’t think you would.”
I didn’t say anything.
I just stared at her, my face cold and blank, giving her nothing.
She sighed, looking down at her cuffed hands for a second, then back up at me.
“I know you hate me,” she said, her voice soft. “And you have every right to. I was a terrible mother. I did terrible things to you. To your father. To Lily. I deserve to be here. I deserve everything that’s happening to me. I’m not going to make excuses. I’m not going to ask for forgiveness. I know I’ll never get it. But I need you to listen to me. Because what I’m about to tell you could save Lily’s life.”
She paused, leaning forward a little, her voice dropping to a whisper, even though no one else was close enough to hear.
“Before I was arrested, I paid a man,” she said, her eyes wide and serious. “A professional. I paid him $2 million to kill you and Ethan, and make it look like a car accident. I was supposed to get custody of Lily after you were dead, take over Voss, everything. I called off the hit the day I was arrested, when I knew I was going to prison for life. I told him it was over, that I didn’t need him anymore. But he refused. He said he doesn’t cancel contracts once they’re signed. He said he’s already been paid half, and he’s going to finish the job, then come after me in prison for the other half. He’s going to kill you and Ethan, Clara. And then he’s going to take Lily. He says he’s going to sell her on the black market, get more money for her than I ever paid him. He’s already in the country. He’s been watching your house for weeks. He’s planning to do it next week, when you and Ethan go to the Langford charity gala. He’s going to plant a bomb in your car. He’s going to make sure no one survives.”
I stared at her, my blood running cold.
A hitman.
A bomb.
Lily being sold.
It was the worst thing I could possibly imagine.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” I said, my voice steady, even though my hands were shaking under the table. “How do I know this is just another one of your tricks to get in my head?”
Helen reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit, pulled out a small folded piece of paper, and slid it across the table to me.
“His name is Marcus Webb,” she said. “That’s all the information I have on him. His real name, his aliases, his last known address, the bank account I used to pay him. Everything. You can check it. It’s all real. I wouldn’t lie about this, Clara. Not about Lily. I may have been a terrible mother to you. I may have done every terrible thing you think I did. But I would never let anyone hurt that baby. Never. She’s the only good thing I ever had any part in creating. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her because of me. That’s why I called you. To make it right. The only way I can.”
I picked up the piece of paper, unfolded it, and looked at the information written on it.
Names.
Dates.
Bank account numbers.
Specific details about the gala, about our car, about our routine.
Details no one but someone who’d really planned this could know.
It was real.
I folded the paper back up, put it in my pocket, and stood up from the table, ready to leave.
“Clara, wait,” Helen said, reaching across the table like she wanted to touch my hand, then pulling back when she saw the look on my face. “There’s one more thing. Before I go. I need you to know. Your father never stopped loving you. The day he disowned you, he cried in my arms for three hours. He hated himself for it. I made him do it. I told him if he didn’t, I’d leave him, tell everyone he’d abused me, ruin his reputation. I manipulated him every single day of our marriage. He was a good man. He loved you more than anything. I’m sorry I took him from you. I’m sorry I took everything from you. I hope one day, you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Not for me. For you. So you don’t have to carry this anger around forever.”
I looked at her, at the broken, crying woman sitting across from me, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel anger.
I didn’t feel hate.
I just felt nothing.
Empty.
Like she was a stranger to me now.
Like she’d never been my mother at all.
“I will never forgive you,” I said, my voice calm and steady. “Not for what you did to me. Not for what you did to my dad. Not for what you did to Lily. But I’m not going to carry your anger around anymore. You’re not worth it. You’re nothing to me now. I have a family. I have a life. And you’re never going to be part of it again. Goodbye, Helen.”
I turned and walked out of the visiting room, not looking back, even when I heard her start sobbing behind me.
Ethan pulled me into his arms the second I walked out of the room, holding me tight.
“Are you okay?” he said, kissing the top of my head. “What did she say? Did she hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” I said, pulling the piece of paper out of my pocket, handing it to Sarah. “But we have a big problem. Call the FBI. Call the security team. We have a hitman to catch.”
The next week was a blur of activity.
The FBI investigated the information Helen had given us, and confirmed it was all real.
Marcus Webb was a known hitman, responsible for at least 12 murders across three countries.
He really was in the country.
He really was planning to kill us at the gala.
The FBI, the Voss security team, and the local police worked together to set a trap.
They let Webb think we didn’t know anything, let him plant the fake bomb the FBI had swapped for a real one in our car, let him think he was going to get away with it.
The night of the gala, we drove to the event center, Ethan and I in the back seat, Lily at home with Marnie and a team of 10 security guards, the FBI and our security team following close behind, hidden in unmarked cars.
Webb tried to detonate the bomb as we pulled up to the event center.
Nothing happened.
He tried to run.
The FBI was waiting for him.
They arrested him as he tried to climb over a fence behind the building, and he’s now in the same maximum security prison as Helen and Brooke, serving 12 consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.
It was the last loose end.
The last threat.
The last person who wanted to hurt us.
We went home that night, held Lily tight while she slept, and finally, finally allowed ourselves to believe it was really over.
The next three months were the happiest of my life.
We settled into a new routine.
I ran Voss and Langford from the office downtown three days a week, working to make both companies better, fairer, more focused on helping people than just making money.
We restored all the stolen pension funds to the Langford employees, gave everyone a raise, started a scholarship fund for the kids of military families, built 10 new community centers across the country.
Eleanor moved into the big house down the street from us, and she was over every day, spoiling Lily rotten, teaching me all the stories about my dad I’d never heard, finally giving me the grandmother I’d always wanted.
Marnie moved to a small house a few blocks away, and she and Eleanor became best friends, spending their days planning Lily’s first birthday party, volunteering at the community center, living the happy, peaceful life they both deserved.
Ethan was promoted at the base, and he was home every night for dinner, every weekend to play with Lily, to help me with the companies, to just be with us.
Lily grew bigger every day, learning to sit up, to crawl, to say “Mama” and “Dada” and “Nana” for Eleanor, her smile lighting up every room she walked into.
She was happy.
Safe.
Loved.
Everything I’d ever wanted for her.
The day of her first birthday party, the sun was shining, the sky was bright blue, and our big backyard was full of people we loved—Eleanor, Marnie, Sarah, Elias, Diana, Marcus and the security team, Ethan’s whole family, our friends from the base, the employees from Voss and Langford and their kids.
Lily was sitting in the middle of the lawn, covered in cake, laughing as the kids chased bubbles around her, when the mail carrier walked up the driveway, holding a thick, registered envelope.
I signed for it, curious, and opened it while everyone was singing happy birthday.
It was a letter from the prison warden.
Helen had been found dead in her cell that morning.
The medical examiner said it was a heart attack, natural causes, no foul play.
She’d left a note, addressed to me.
I unfolded it, my hands shaking a little, and read it.
Clara,
If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I knew I didn’t have long. My heart has been bad for years. I didn’t tell anyone. I deserved to die here, alone, for everything I did.
I wrote this to say one last thing. I’m sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know. I wasted my whole life being angry, being greedy, hurting everyone who ever loved me. I had a chance to be happy, with your father, with you, and I threw it all away because I was too stupid to see what I had right in front of me.
Don’t be like me. Don’t waste your life being angry at the past. You have a beautiful family. A beautiful life. Enjoy it. Love them. Forgive yourself for the things you think you did wrong. You are a good mother. A good wife. A good person. Your father would be so proud of you. I am proud of you.
Take care of Lily. Tell her about me someday, if you want. Tell her the good parts, if you can find any. Tell her I loved her, in my own broken way.
Goodbye, Clara. Be happy. You deserve it.
Helen
I folded the letter back up, put it in my pocket, and looked out at the party, at Lily laughing, at Ethan talking to his dad, at Eleanor and Marnie dancing to the music, at all the people I loved, all the people who loved me.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t feel sad.
I just felt… free.
Free of Helen.
Free of the past.
Free to be happy.
I walked out onto the lawn, knelt down next to Lily, wiped the cake off her face, and picked her up, holding her high in the air, making her laugh so hard she snort-laughed, the sound the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
Ethan walked over, putting his arm around my waist, kissing me soft on the lips.
“Everything okay?” he said, glancing at the envelope in my hand.
I smiled, looking at our daughter, at our family, at the beautiful, perfect life we’d built together.
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“Everything is perfect,” I said.
And for the first time in my life, I really meant it.
