# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Twenty-Three — Cole's Real Motive
She found out on a Sunday evening.
Not from Cole directly. From Jake, who had apparently known for years and had been carrying it with the specific weight of a family secret that was too large to put down and too complicated to hand to someone else.
They were alone in the apartment — Nathan was at his office managing a portfolio review, Patricia was working from home, Cole was at the hotel. Jake was on the couch with his coffee and the particular stillness he got in the evenings when the day's urgent things had settled and what was left was the quiet architecture of everything he carried from Houston.
She came out of the kitchen and looked at him and said: "Tell me something true."
It was the sentence she used
