“But it wasn’t,” I said.
“No,” he whispered. “It was control.”
I thought about Daniel and the way he had gradually convinced me to distance myself from my family—to see Dad as paranoid and Mom as cold.
“Daniel knew.”
Mom nodded.
“He somehow found out.”
“And he used it.”
“Just as Claire used him.”
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“She’s using him now.”
Dad reached for my shoulder.
“Emily, you don’t have to go tomorrow.”
“Yes, I do.”
“It could be a trap.”
“It is a trap,” I said. “But if I don’t show up, she wins. Daniel wins. And the company collapses under a lie.”
Mom straightened.
“What are you going to do?”
I thought about the flash drive.
The recordings.
The hidden accounts.
The authorization Claire had forged.
“I’m going to dismantle them,” I said.
The night passed like a fever.
I didn’t sleep.
Instead, I sat in my childhood bedroom—the room I hadn’t entered in years—and examined every file on the flash drive.
Letters.
