LOVING YOU WAS HIS REVENGE

CHAPTER 3: What My Father Left Behind

The bus rattled through the wet streets of London, and I read the message seven times before I reached Mirabel's flat.

"Your father did not jump."

For two years, those words had lived inside my chest, beating alongside my heart. Everyone said Samuel Williams killed himself. The police, the newspapers, even Victor. But I knew my father. He was not a man who would leave his children behind without a fight.

Mirabel opened her door before I could knock. She was still in her nurse scrubs from the night shift, her braids piled on top of her head, her round face creased with worry.

"Evelyn, what happened? You look terrible."

"Thank you," I said, stepping inside. Her flat was small and warm, smelling of toast and lavender.

"I am serious. Sit down. Talk to me."

I sat on her sofa and placed my bag on the floor. "I left Victor."

Mirabel's eyebrows rose. "Left him? Why? What did he do?"

"My marriage was a lie, Mirabel. All of it. My father sold me to Victor to pay a debt."

She sat down slowly, her mouth open. "What are you talking about?"

I told her everything. The contract, the fifty million pounds, the clause about three years, Victor's cold admission, and the accusation about my father and Victor's missing sister. Mirabel listened without interrupting, her face moving through shock, anger, and finally something close to grief.

"And you are pregnant," she said when I finished.

"Yes."

"Does he know?"

"I told him. He said it changes nothing."

Mirabel pressed both hands over her face. "That man. That terrible, terrible man." She dropped her hands. "What are you going to do?"

"I do not know." I pulled out my phone and showed her the message from the unknown number. "But someone sent me this an hour ago."

Mirabel read it and frowned. "This could be a trap."

"Or it could be the truth."

"Evelyn, you just found out your entire life was a scam. You are pregnant, homeless, and broke. This is not the time to go meeting strangers."

"If my father did not kill himself, I need to know who is responsible."

Mirabel grabbed my hand. "Then let me come with you."

"The message says come alone."

"I do not care what it says."

I shook my head. "If someone is watching, they might not show up. Mirabel, please. Just let me do this."

She did not like it. But she knew me well enough to know that arguing would not change my mind. She made me eat a plate of toast, forced me to drink two glasses of water, and made me promise to text her every thirty minutes.

At noon, I stood outside St. Paul's Cathedral. Rain had started falling again, light but steady, and I pulled my jacket tighter around me. The square was busy with tourists and office workers rushing back from lunch.

"Evelyn Williams?"

I turned. A man in a dark coat stood beside me, holding a black umbrella. He was tall, around my age, with a serious face and kind eyes. It took me a moment, then recognition hit me.

"Francis?"

Francis smiled. "It has been a long time."

Francis was my senior at university. We studied in the same faculty before I dropped out. He had graduated top of his class and gone into law. I had not seen him in over three years.

"You sent that message?" I asked.

"I did. Let us walk."

We moved through the rain, Francis holding the umbrella over both of us. "I am a solicitor now," he said. "Six months ago, a client came to me with a box of documents. Old files, financial records, things that were meant to be destroyed. My client found them in a storage unit he purchased at auction."

"What does this have to do with my father?"

Francis stopped walking and faced me. "Evelyn, your father was being blackmailed in the months before he died. Large sums of money were being taken from his accounts, directed to a shell company. I traced the company. It belongs to Benjamin Casmir."

"Benjamin." I knew that name. Victor's uncle. A quiet man who attended our wedding and shook my hand with a smile. "Why would Victor's uncle be blackmailing my father?"

"That is what I am trying to find out. But there is more." Francis pulled a folded paper from his coat pocket and handed it to me. "This was in the same box. It is a witness statement, unsigned, written in your father's handwriting. He wrote it two days before he died."

I unfolded the paper. My father's handwriting stared back at me, shaky but clear.

"I did not take that child. I was set up. Benjamin Casmir planted evidence on my property. I can prove this if given the chance. He used Grace's disappearance to destroy my business and take control of the Casmir family trust. My daughter does not know any of this. She must never marry into that family. If something happens to me, tell Evelyn to look in her mother's old music box. The truth is there."

The paper trembled in my hands.

"Evelyn," Francis said gently. "Your father was trying to warn you."

My mother's music box. It was a small wooden thing with a dancing ballerina inside, painted blue and gold. My mother gave it to me before she died. I kept it for years, but when I married Victor, it was packed away with my old things.

In Victor's house.

I looked up at Francis. "I need to go back to that house."

"Evelyn, wait. If Benjamin Casmir is behind this, he is dangerous. Your father is dead. The evidence was hidden. This man does not want the truth to come out."

"Then I will be careful."

Francis handed me a business card. "Call me. Anytime. I will help you with this."

"Why?" I asked. "Why are you helping me?"

He looked at me for a long moment. "Because I was there the day your father fell. I was in the building across the street. I saw two men on that rooftop with him, and one of them pushed him."

The rain fell harder, but I could not move, could not breathe. All I could see was my father's face, his gentle smile, and the terrible knowledge that he did not choose to leave me.

Someone pushed him. And the answer to who that someone was might be sitting inside a music box in the house of the man who married me for revenge.