I collapsed.
“Derek told me you were gone,” I sobbed.
“He made sure I couldn’t come back,” she whispered. “His father did. Your father found their accounts. He was going to expose them. They destroyed our family before you were old enough to understand.”
I stared at her, my tears turning cold.
Victor’s jaw tightened. “Derek didn’t choose you by accident, Lena. Your father hid evidence before he died. Derek thought you knew where it was.”
“I didn’t,” I whispered.
My mother pulled back and touched the diamond necklace at my throat.
“Yes, you did.”
She turned the center stone gently.
It opened.
Inside, beneath the diamond Derek had clasped around my neck that very evening, was a thin black drive.
The room seemed to vanish.
Derek had given me the necklace as a symbol of ownership. He had smiled while fastening it, whispering, “Now everyone will know you’re mine.”
But it had never been his.
It had been my father’s final hiding place.
My mother’s hands shook as she removed the drive. “Your father designed this setting for me. Derek’s family stole it after the crash. They never knew what was inside.”
Victor looked at me, and now I understood the sentence he had whispered after the kiss.
Let him see what he lost.
Not just me.
The evidence.