Chapter 6 - The Unlikely Ally
An hour later, Claire Whitmore sat across from me in the quiet library of Sarah Lin’s home.
She had traded her ivory wedding dress for a simple cream cashmere sweater and tailored dark jeans, but she still looked exhausted. Dark circles shadowed her pale blue eyes, and her hands trembled slightly as she held a cup of chamomile tea.
"I don't even know where to start," Claire said, her voice barely above a whisper. "When you walked into that ballroom... I thought you were insane. I thought you were just a jealous ex-wife trying to ruin my happiest day."
"That’s what he trained you to think," I replied gently. "Mason is a master at making women feel like they’re the problem."
Claire wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. "He told me you died, Rachel. He showed me a death certificate. He told me you died of complications during childbirth in a private clinic in Mexico. He even took me to a grave site last spring."
My blood ran cold. "A grave site?"
"Yes," Claire nodded, her eyes wide with lingering horror. "A small marble headstone in a cemetery near the lake. He cried, Rachel. He wept on his knees in front of me, telling me how much he regretted not being able to save you. It was all a play. Every single word was a calculated performance to make me feel sorry for him, to make me want to protect him."
I reached across the wooden table and placed my hand over hers. "It wasn't your fault, Claire. He did the same thing to me when we met six years ago. He found my weaknesses, my loss after my father died, and he used them to build a cage around me."
Claire looked up, her expression turning firm, a flicker of strength returning to her voice. "He took twenty million dollars from my father’s foundation, Rachel. He told us it was going into green energy infrastructure. My father was broken when he found out. He feels like he failed me."
"We can get it back," I said firmly.
Claire blinked. "How? The federal prosecutors said the money was moved through private banks in the Cayman Islands."
I stood up, walked over to my leather tote bag on the sofa, and pulled out an old, velvet-lined mahogany box. I set it on the table between us.
"Before Mason left me on that mountain," I explained, opening the latch, "he thought he had cleaned out my father’s safe deposit box. He took the deeds, the bearer bonds, the stock certificates. But he didn't know my father was a paranoid engineer who kept duplicate microchips hidden inside his vintage pocket watch collection."
I pressed a hidden spring on the back of a silver pocket watch. The inner lining popped open, revealing a micro-SD card no larger than a fingernail.
"This card contains every transaction ledger, every private password, and every offshore account key Mason created using my father’s business credentials over the last five years," I said. "Including the Whitmore Foundation transfers."
Claire stared at the tiny memory card, her jaw dropping. "Rachel... this is enough to freeze every single one of his offshore accounts before his lawyers can touch them."
May you like
"I don't want his money, Claire," I said, looking her straight in the eye. "I just want what belongs to my daughter, and I want to make sure Mason Sterling never hurts another human being as long as he lives."
Claire looked at me, a slow, determined smile finally breaking through her tears. "Let's finish him."
