LOVING YOU WAS HIS REVENGE

CHAPTER 5: The Husband

The moment Evelyn walked out of my front door three days ago, something cracked open inside my chest that I did not know how to close.

I stood at my study window, watching Emmanuel pull the car around to the driveway, and I could still smell her shampoo in the hallway. Lavender and something sweet that I never asked the name of because asking would have meant I cared too much. And caring was not part of the plan.

Fifteen years. I spent fifteen years building myself into the kind of man who could sit across from Samuel Williams and smile while shaking his hand. The kind of man who could marry his daughter, share her bed, eat her cooking, and wake up beside her every morning without losing sight of why I was there.

Grace…My little sister with the gap in her front teeth and the habit of humming songs she made up. She vanished on a Tuesday afternoon from a construction site owned by the Williams family. Nine years old. The police searched for three months and found nothing. My mother stopped eating. My father stopped speaking. And I stopped being a child.

The Williams family property. Samuel Williams' guards were the last people to see Grace alive. That was enough for my family, even if it was not enough for the courts.

But I was not supposed to feel anything for Evelyn. She was a means to an end. The contract stated three years, and I planned to spend those years making the Williams family pay slowly, methodically, starting with the thing Samuel loved most.

Except Evelyn made it difficult.

She made it difficult by leaving her sketches all over the house, beautiful drawings of buildings that did not exist yet. She made it difficult by waking up before me every morning to make sure there was fresh coffee on the counter. She made it difficult by pressing her cold feet against my legs in winter and laughing when I flinched.

She made it difficult by being nothing like her father.

I drove to the office that morning and could not focus on a single document. Tonia arrived at nine with a folder full of contracts that needed signing, and I stared through her like she was made of glass.

"Victor, are you listening to me?"

"What?"

"The Whitmore acquisition. They want an answer by Friday." She placed the folder on my desk. "You look terrible. Did you sleep?"

"No."

Tonia sat in the chair across from me and crossed her legs. She was sharp, capable, and she knew me better than most people. We grew up together. She was there when Grace disappeared, there when my mother died, there when I decided to marry Evelyn.

"She left, did she not?" Tonia asked.

"She found the contract."

"Good." Tonia leaned forward. "Then it is over. Sign the divorce papers, give her whatever settlement shuts her up, and move on. You did what you set out to do."

"She is pregnant."

Tonia went quiet. Her perfectly composed face flickered for just a moment before settling back into its usual calm mask.

"I see. And you are certain it is yours?"

"Do not," I said. My voice came out harder than I intended. "Do not go there."

She raised her hands. "Fine. So what are you going to do?"

I did not answer because I did not know. The plan was simple for fifteen years: make the Williams family suffer, then walk away. Nowhere in that plan was there a child. Nowhere in that plan was there the look on Evelyn's face when she said "I am pregnant" and I told her it changed nothing.

I lied. It changed everything.

But I did not know how to say that. I did not know how to be anything other than the machine I built myself into.

At seven that evening, I came home to an empty house and went upstairs. The spare room door was open, the one where Evelyn kept her things. I walked inside and looked at the bare shelves.

I did not donate her belongings. I moved them to a storage unit across the city two weeks ago, after she signed divorce papers I had drawn up but never sent. I did not want her things gone. I wanted them somewhere safe. Somewhere I could...

I did not finish that thought.

Her mother's music box was in my bedroom closet, top shelf, behind a stack of shirts. I took it down and held it in my hands. Small, wooden, painted blue and gold. A tiny ballerina spun when you opened the lid.

I never opened it.

I knew there was something inside. The bottom panel was slightly loose, clearly hiding a compartment. When I packed her things, I noticed it but did not pry. Whatever secrets the dead kept, I told myself they were not mine to uncover.

But then Evelyn came back tonight asking for this box specifically. And when she said her father did not kill himself, my blood went cold.

Because I was there that day. Not on the rooftop, but in the building. I went to confront Samuel Williams about Grace. I wanted him to admit what he did, to say the words to my face. I took the elevator to his floor, and when the doors opened, I saw my uncle Benjamin walking out of Samuel's office with two men I did not recognize.

Benjamin smiled at me and said, "He is not in. Come, let us get lunch."

Thirty minutes later, Samuel Williams was dead on the pavement below.

I never told anyone what I saw. Benjamin was family. He raised me after my father withdrew from the world. He funded my education, gave me my first position in the company, and supported every move I made. When he said Samuel jumped, I wanted to believe him. It was easier than the alternative.

But Evelyn's words tonight ripped that comfort away.

"He was pushed."

She knew. Somehow, she knew. And if she started digging, she would find Benjamin. And Benjamin was not a man who allowed loose ends.

My phone rang. Clinton's name appeared on the screen.

"Brother," he said. "We need to talk."

Clinton was three years younger than me, lighter in spirit, less burdened by Grace's disappearance because he was only a baby when it happened. He worked for Benjamin now, managing the property division, and I rarely heard urgency in his voice.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I found something in my uncle's safe. He sent me to fetch some contracts this evening, and I noticed a folder that did not match the others. So I looked."

"Clinton, slow down."

"Victor, there are photographs in this folder. Old photographs. Of a little girl in a room I do not recognize. And written on the back of one of them..." His voice cracked. "Written on the back is Grace's name and a date. A date from six years after she disappeared."

The music box fell from my hands and hit the floor with a sharp crack.

"Victor, are you there?"

"I am here."

"If these photos are real, Grace was alive for years after she went missing. Uncle kept photos of her. Why would he have photos of her unless..."

"Where are you right now?" I asked.

"I am still at his office. Victor, there is more. There is a second name on one of the photos. A woman's name. She..."

The line went dead.

I called back, no answer. I called again..silence.

I grabbed my keys and ran for the door.