Chapter 12 - THE HIDDEN SAFE
The police allowed me to return to the penthouse two days later.
I did not want to go.
That surprised me.
For seven years, I had called it home.
Now it felt like a crime scene that happened to contain my clothes.
Detective Ellis walked beside me.
My father remained downstairs at my request.
I needed to enter without being anyone's daughter.
The orchids were gone.
The glass had been collected.
Forensic markers remained near the coffee table.
The cane was evidence.
A dark stain still marked the marble grout.
I stared at it.
Detective Ellis noticed.
“Take your time.”
“I've spent enough time here.”
I walked toward Matthew's office.
The police had already searched it.
Lauren had told them about a hidden safe behind the art panel.
They found cash.
Three passports.
A luxury watch collection.
Property deeds.
Nothing from Lighthouse.
I stood in the doorway.
Matthew had been obsessed with redundancy.
Two backups.
Two sets of keys.
Two phones.
Two lives.
“Did you search the wine room?”
Ellis looked at me.
“Yes.”
“The storage cellar downstairs?”
“Yes.”
I stared at his desk.
Then I remembered something.
Seven years earlier, during our first apartment move, Matthew refused to let movers handle his old desktop computer.
“Never trust someone else's hands with your future.”
The phrase returned.
His future.
Not documents.
Not money.
I looked at the fireplace.
The antique hickory cane had usually rested in a brass stand beside it.
“Where is the cane stand?”
Ellis frowned.
“Evidence technicians moved it.”
“Was it searched?”
“For what?”
I crouched carefully.
Pain pulled across my ribs.
The stand was hollow brass.
Heavy.
Decorative.
A wedding gift from Matthew's grandfather along with the cane.
“The bottom unscrews.”
Ellis stared at me.
“How do you know?”
“Because Matthew once hid our apartment key inside it when we traveled.”
She called the evidence unit.
Forty minutes later, technicians opened the base.
Inside was a waterproof capsule.
Inside the capsule was a small black storage device.
Matthew had hidden the key to his empire beneath the object he used to beat me.
The irony was almost obscene.
By evening, forensic analysts had opened it.
Lauren had been right.
Matthew kept everything.
Account lists.
Private messages with Victor.
Offshore structures.
Draft plans for Cascade Meridian.
But one folder was different.
CLARE.
Arthur opened it.
Inside were photographs.
My driver's license.
My passport.
Copies of my signatures.
Medical documents.
Emails.
Recorded phone calls.
And a spreadsheet titled BEHAVIOR LOG.
I stared at it.
“What is that?”
Arthur scrolled.
Arguments.
Dates I visited friends.
Times I questioned expenses.
Medication I took after dental surgery.
Glasses of wine consumed at business dinners.
Every ordinary moment had been documented.
My father looked sick.
“He was building a competency case.”
Arthur nodded.
“If Clare challenged the divorce or company transactions, he planned to argue she was unstable.”
I read one note.
SUBJECT BECOMES EMOTIONAL WHEN DISCUSSING CHILDREN.
Another.
FAMILY ESTRANGEMENT INCREASES DEPENDENCY.
I stopped reading.
Matthew had not simply controlled me.
He had studied how successfully the control was working.
Then Arthur opened another file.
A draft divorce petition.
Prepared eight months earlier.
Lauren was listed nowhere.
My alleged instability appeared everywhere.
At the bottom was a proposed settlement.
I would receive two million dollars.
Matthew would retain all NexusCore interests.
My father looked at me.
“Clare.”
I did not cry.
I closed the laptop.
“When is the Delaware hearing?”
“Tomorrow at nine.”
“Good.”
I stood.
“Then tomorrow we stop him from stealing the company.”
“And after that?”
May you like
I looked at the dark fireplace.
“After that, I stop him from defining my life.”
