Chapter 3 - The Collateral Wife
The revelation felt like a physical blow. The room spun, and I had to grip the edge of the kitchen table to keep my balance. My father—the man who tucked me in, who read me bedtime stories, who struggled to pay our dental bills—had been knee-deep in the Vance family's corruption.
"And you knew?" I whispered, tears of betrayal burning behind my eyelids. "All those visits... all those times I sat on the other side of that glass, crying for you, promising I would clear your name... you knew who I was the entire time?"
"At first, yes," Jonah confessed, looking down at his scarred knuckles. "When my mother came to the visitation room three years ago and told me she had found the perfect girl to play the devoted wife for the parole board, I hated you before I even met you. I thought you were in on it. I thought your father had passed down the extortion scheme to his daughter."
"I was twenty-four!" I cried out, my voice breaking. "I was working two shifts at a diner and scrubbing floors at a motel just to keep a roof over Toby’s head! I didn't know anything about money!"
"I learned that on your third visit," Jonah said softly, reaching across the table. His hand hovered over mine, hesitant, before he pulled it back, unwilling to force his touch on me. "You brought me a drawing Toby made of an airplane. You told me you couldn't afford his asthma inhaler that month, but you were still saving twenty dollars to buy him a birthday cake. That was the day I realized you were a pawn, just like me."
"Then why keep this from me until now?" I asked, gesturing wildly at the black box. "Why drop this bomb on our kitchen table a week after you got out?"
"Because of what my cousin Julian did before I walked out of those gates," Jonah said, his jaw tightening into iron. "Julian didn't just steal the money to frame me. He was looking for the ledger your father hid before he died. Julian thought it was in my possession. When he realized I didn't have it, he shifted his focus."
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Jonah reached into the box and pulled out a small, handwritten note written on prison stationery. It had arrived in his final release package, unsigned, but the handwriting was unmistakably Eleanor Vance's elegant script.
*The contract is fulfilled, Jonah. But Clara belongs to the family now. If she doesn't produce her father's key by the end of the month, Toby pays the family debt.*
