Chapter 13 - THE FILE WITH MY NAME
The file was twenty-eight pages long.
Every page was about me.
My schools.
My university.
My marriage.
My medical records.
My travel.
My friends.
My private financial accounts.
Photographs taken without my knowledge.
Some were ten years old.
Victor Sloane had been watching me before I ever met Nathan.
I sat in the command vehicle reading page after page while dawn appeared over Port Langston.
“Why?”
Dad stood beside me.
“I don’t know.”
Then I reached page twenty-three.
A photograph showed Nathan at a restaurant seven years earlier.
Across the table sat Victor.
Underneath was a typed instruction.
SUBJECT ASHFORD APPROVED FOR VALE ACCESS STRATEGY.
My hands went cold.
Nathan had not met me by accident.
Our first meeting at a charity event had been arranged.
Victor chose him.
Nathan courted me because I was Elias Vale’s daughter.
Maybe he had eventually convinced himself it was love.
Maybe not.
But our marriage began as an operation.
Dad read the page over my shoulder.
His face hardened.
“He was trying to reach me through you.”
I thought back to our first date.
Nathan asking about my childhood.
My father.
His career.
Why Dad traveled so often.
I thought those questions meant Nathan cared about my family.
He had been gathering intelligence.
The betrayal felt different from the affair.
Different from the violence.
Those things destroyed the marriage I thought I had.
This destroyed its beginning.
Nathan was brought from the customs building on a stretcher.
The gunshot had grazed his shoulder.
He was conscious.
When he saw me holding the file, he looked away.
I walked toward him.
Dad tried to stop me.
I kept going.
“Did you marry me for Victor?”
Nathan said nothing.
“Nathan.”
His face tightened.
“At first.”
Two words.
That was all.
At first.
I felt strangely calm.
“When did it change?”
He laughed weakly.
“You really want me to say I fell in love with you?”
“I want the truth.”
“The truth?”
He looked at me.
“The truth is you were supposed to be easy.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“Quiet daughter.”
“Protected inheritance.”
“Access to Elias Vale.”
“Victor thought I could control you.”
“And could you?”
Nathan smiled bitterly.
“No.”
For once, we agreed.
He was loaded into the ambulance.
Before the doors closed, he called my name.
I looked back.
“Victor won’t stop.”
“Neither will we.”
Nathan shook his head.
“You don’t understand.”
“What?”
“He didn’t leave that file by accident.”
The ambulance doors began closing.
“He wants you to read the last page.”
I looked down.
There were twenty-eight pages.
I had stopped at twenty-three.
I turned to the last page.
May you like
Only one sentence appeared.
ELIAS VALE DID NOT TELL HIS DAUGHTER HOW HER MOTHER DIED.
