Half a Million Dollars
Chapter 07 - Half a Million Dollars
We met Lily in a diner forty miles from the city.
She was twenty-one, with Vanessa’s dark eyes and the same careful way of lifting her chin when she felt cornered. She wore jeans, a college sweatshirt, and no jewelry except a thin silver ring.
She looked nothing like a woman chasing an inheritance.
She looked like someone who had gone several nights without sleeping.
Ethan waited in the car because Lily had asked to meet me alone.
She sat across from me with both hands wrapped around a coffee cup.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
“What did you expect?”
“Someone polished. Calculating.”
“Vanessa’s description?”
“She said you got pregnant after Ethan tried to end the marriage.”
“That never happened.”
“She said you convinced him to create a trust that would give your baby control of the company.”
“I didn’t know any trust existed.”
Lily studied me.
Three weeks earlier, she had contacted Vanessa after finding her name in sealed adoption records. Vanessa met her privately, paid the remaining balance of her college tuition, and promised to introduce her to the family after the company transition.
“In return for what?” I asked.
Lily looked toward the window.
“She wanted me to sign a statement saying Ethan knew about my adoption and helped keep it secret.”
“Did he?”
“I had never met him.”
A sick heaviness settled in my chest.
“She wanted to use you to make him look cruel.”
“She said he deserved it.”
“What do you think?”
“I think everyone keeps telling me who deserves what.”
Lily reached into her bag and placed a check on the table.
It was made out to me for five hundred thousand dollars.
Vanessa’s signature was at the bottom.
“She told me to give you this,” Lily said. “You get the money if you leave Ethan before the audit ends.”
I did not touch it.
“Why bring it to me?”
“Because I wanted to see whether you would take it.”
“And now?”
Lily looked at my wedding ring, then my stomach.
“Now I think she wanted both of us to prove something.”
“What?”
“That everyone eventually chooses money.”
I slid the check back across the table.
Lily tore it into four pieces.
Outside, Ethan stood when we approached. He looked at Lily but did not move toward her.
“You look like my sister,” he said quietly.
Lily’s eyes filled.
“You look like the pictures in the hotel magazines.”
“That’s not much of an introduction.”
“No.”
He opened his mouth, then stopped.
Lily looked at me.
“There’s something else. Vanessa didn’t leak your hospital records.”
“Who did?”
“She said the leak came from someone who wanted Ethan to believe Vanessa was responsible.”
Before Lily could explain, her phone buzzed.
She read the message and went pale.
“My adoptive mother’s house was broken into.”
May you like
“Was anything taken?”
“Only my adoption file.”
