Started With a Lie

Chapter Fifty-One

              "Who was it?"

            "We didn't know for the longest time," she explains. "Most people had quit and not every worker had access to your father's room. Only certain. The list of suspects was short but it was hard to find the person. Security cameras had been wiped out and security themselves had been bribed. We ran several thorough investigations."

             "...And?"

             "It was the vice president." Madam Jin sighs, breathing in through her nose before calming to speak again. Her hands return to play with her ring. "He was a friend of mine so I had never suspected it to be him, but he was the only one with enough access and power to pull it off. But one of his assistants gave him up after an offer made by my lawyers."

           My eyes widen. Someone that close and dangerous was around my father? All my life I'd believed he'd died in an accident. Not murder.

            Madam Jin continues, "It didn't end well when we confronted him. One night, he barged in through my home, fighting through security, screaming that he'd get revenge. We'd ruined his career and put him in jail. He said your father didn't deserve to be president, didn't deserve to live. That he'd pay, with his life or with a generous amount of money."

             "But...he was put in jail, right?" I ask. "He's in custody?"

             She looks at me and shakes her head solemnly. "With money and power like that, you can get out of almost anything. His lawyers poked and prodded the case, bribed many, and found holes in our statements. He got off after a couple of years. At first, his threats had been empty but we'd already gone as far to get a restraining order anyway.

            "Your father was anxious. He didn't like it. He wanted to take you all away. As long as Victor, the ex-vice president of the company and now criminal, was out on the streets, your father would not stop looking over his shoulder, ready to whisk his wife and children away at a moment's notice. And the day came. Victor came back with his own group of revenge-seeking ex-workers to confront your father one day. It was at his home and it was mid afternoon. Your father gave Victor a scar on his eye and your father barely made it out. It was horrible timing as Mary and Brent and you came home that evening from school."

                "I...I don't remember anything," I murmur, squeezing my hands into fists as if to wake myself up or conjure any faded memories. "I don't remember...."

              Madam Jin places a gentle hand over mine and eases my hand apart from the compact fist. "It's all right, Ivory. That's not in your control. You were only a little girl and even Brent was too young to remember."

               I nod, shutting my eyes momentarily to stop any tears that might fall. "I know." After a breath, I open them again, breathing through my nose and holding my wavering breath. "What happened after we came home?"

                  "Your father grabbed everyone and got in his car and drove. Information about this is uncertain as no one really knows what happens," she says. "But what I know, or knew as of months ago, was that there was an explosion. All the cars involved in that chase down the private road had burned. That night, I lost all of my family. Police and examiners claimed bodies were too burned to be identified but I recognized the car and knew. There were no stop light cameras or security footage as it was in your father's home which was quite in the middle of nowhere upstate. No one knew what happened to Victor either. At the time, the grief was so unbearable nothing else mattered...."

               A silence covers us like a warm blanket. I use the time to soak all her words in, process all this information in my head. If this is real, how could it happen? How could this possibly be real? How could I have had a different life at some point? How could I be the little girl who died in that explosion that night?