Chapter 14 - The Betrayal No One Expected
Sebastian immediately sent the audio to Detective Ortiz.
Within an hour, police began preparing an arrest warrant for Damian.
Khloe should have felt safe.
She did not.
Something about the recording still bothered her.
“Why did Isabella record him?”
Sebastian looked at her.
“Insurance.”
“Maybe.”
Khloe replayed the audio.
Damian.
Isabella.
A faint clinking sound.
Music in the background.
Then another voice.
Very soft.
Almost impossible to hear.
Khloe raised the volume.
“What is that?”
Sebastian listened.
A woman’s voice.
One sentence.
“We’re running out of time.”
Khloe looked at him.
“That isn’t Isabella.”
“No.”
“Elaine?”
Sebastian shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
Audio specialists isolated the voice.
Marcus was released from custody shortly after dawn.
He returned to the hospital.
Khloe showed him the clip.
He listened once.
Then again.
His face changed.
“You recognize her.”
Marcus nodded.
“Who?”
He looked sick.
“My mother.”
Khloe stared at him.
“Your mother is dead.”
Marcus did not answer immediately.
Evelyn Thorne had supposedly died four years earlier in Switzerland after a private battle with cancer.
There had been no public funeral.
Only a memorial.
The family said she had wanted privacy.
Khloe had never questioned it.
Marcus lowered himself into a chair.
“She isn’t dead.”
Khloe felt the room tilt.
“What?”
“My mother disappeared.”
Sebastian stepped forward.
“Explain.”
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face.
“She discovered my father was moving money through shell companies.”
“She threatened to go to authorities.”
“Then she vanished.”
“Damian told me she had terminal cancer and wanted to disappear from public life.”
“A year later he said she died.”
“You believed him?”
“I was twenty-eight.”
“He showed me hospital records.”
“A death certificate.”
“Her attorney confirmed it.”
Khloe stared.
“Why did you tell me she was dead?”
“Because I believed she was.”
Sebastian replayed the audio.
Marcus closed his eyes.
“That’s her.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
Khloe felt another layer of the family history split open.
If Evelyn Thorne was alive, Damian’s conspiracy had begun years before Khloe ever entered the family.
Detective Ortiz traced the recording environment.
The music matched a private club in Manhattan.
Membership records showed Damian had visited there six weeks earlier.
So had a woman registered under the name Evelyn Mercer.
Mercer was Evelyn Thorne’s maiden name.
Khloe looked at Marcus.
“Your mother met Damian.”
“Yes.”
“During the plot against me.”
“Yes.”
Marcus looked shattered.
Sebastian’s investigators found an address connected to Evelyn Mercer.
A private residence outside Greenwich.
Police arrived.
The house was empty.
But someone had left recently.
Warm coffee remained in a mug.
A closet stood open.
A laptop charger lay on the desk.
On the kitchen counter, detectives found a photograph.
Marcus at age fourteen.
Evelyn beside him.
On the back, handwritten words.
I tried to protect him from Damian.
Below that was another sentence.
I failed.
May you like
And beneath it.
Khloe is next.
