Chapter 7 - A Father's Secret
Hannah felt the entire room spin violently around her as the air grew thin.
She absolutely refused to believe that her loving, protective father would do something so incredibly cruel to her.
Marcus calmly reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded, heavily worn bank statement.
He tossed the crinkled document onto the glass coffee table directly in front of her.
It was a confirmed direct wire transfer from Jonathan Vale's personal offshore account, dated the exact day Marcus disappeared.
Marcus bitterly claimed Jonathan hated his working-class background and wanted to protect the pristine Vale legacy at any cost.
Hannah stared at the undeniable paper trail, her heart breaking into a million jagged, irreparable pieces.
She left the hotel in a daze and drove recklessly through the night toward her father's secluded estate.
She stormed past the security guards into Jonathan's study and aggressively threw the bank statement onto his mahogany desk.
She screamed at the old man, tearfully asking if he had really bought her fiancé's life just to control her.
Jonathan looked down at the familiar paper and let out a very long, heavy, defeated sigh.
He did not attempt to deny the signature, nor did he try to make any pathetic excuses for his actions.
He admitted that he had indeed paid Marcus off, but absolutely not because he hated the boy's poor background.
He shockingly revealed that Marcus had been secretly embezzling millions of dollars from the Vale family charity funds.
Jonathan had given the young thief a harsh choice: take the ten million and vanish forever, or go straight to federal prison.
Hannah collapsed heavily into a leather chair, completely overwhelmed by the massive web of lies surrounding her entire life.
She had spent years aggressively punishing her father for being ruthless, only to realize he had been secretly protecting her from a monster.
Her cell phone suddenly buzzed loudly with an urgent text message from Ethan.
It was a highly encrypted audio voice recording attached to an unknown burner number.
Hannah pressed play with trembling fingers and held the speaker close to her ear.
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It was a clear recording of Jonathan blatantly admitting to bribing a city official to secure the Uptown project zoning permits.
Ethan texted her that unless she gave Mercer Construction the contract tomorrow morning, he was sending the tape directly to the FBI.
