I looked through the windshield at the station doors.
“Somewhere you cannot lock.”
Her breathing changed.
“Listen carefully.
Victor is furious, but I can still fix this.
Come home, apologize, and tell anyone who asks that you panicked after drinking.”
“You locked me in a room with him.”
“I was trying to save your father’s company.”
“By giving him access to me?”
Silence.
Then her voice hardened.
“That company employs eight hundred people.
You think your feelings matter more than their jobs?”
Ethan’s jaw tightened, but he remained quiet.
I looked at the evidence bag.
“Why is my folder in Ethan Cole’s car?”
For the first time, Marissa sounded afraid.
“Do not open it.”
“Why?”
“Because you have no idea what your father did.”
I tore open the evidence seal.
The records I had hidden were inside: shell-company invoices, bank transfers, and my father’s letter requesting an audit.
But beneath them lay a notarized statement I had never seen.
The first paragraph identified Victor Kane as the controlling party behind three vendors that had overcharged my father’s company by more than eight million dollars.
The second accused Marissa of approving those payments while my father was receiving cancer treatment.
The third paragraph made my hands shake.
If either Victor Kane or Marissa Vale attempted to intimidate, discredit, confine, or coerce my daughter before the transfer of my voting shares, I authorize Ethan Cole and his firm to release all supporting records to law enforcement, the board of directors, and the press.
My father had anticipated this.
He had known they might come for me.
At the bottom was his signature, dated two days before his death.
Below it was the name of the witness.
Marissa Vale.
Ethan read it over my shoulder.
“She witnessed the statement,” he said.
“She cannot credibly claim she knew nothing about the investigation.”
Marissa was still on the phone.
“Do not show the police that page,” she whispered.
“Your father was alive when I signed it.”
The wording stopped me.
“Of course he was alive.
He signed it.”
She began to cry, but there was calculation beneath every breath.
“You do not understand what happened that night.”
A police officer opened the station door and approached our car.
Ethan lowered his voice.
“Ask her what she means.”
“What happened that night, Marissa?”
The call disconnected.
Inside the station, a female detective named Lena Ortiz took us into separate interview rooms.
A nurse cleaned the cut on my ankle while I described the locked door, Victor’s grip, the smashed lamp, and Marissa’s slap.
Detective Ortiz photographed the red marks on my wrist and the tear in my dress.
She did not interrupt or ask why I had gone upstairs.
She simply documented everything.
When I finished, she placed my phone in an evidence bag.
“Mr.
