Chapter 12 - The Woman With My Father’s Eyes
Rebecca Montgomery was waiting downstairs in the executive reception area.
She was forty-three years old, nearly six years older than me.
The first thing I noticed when she stood was her eyes.
Gray-green.
Exactly like my father’s.
It felt like being punched in the chest by a ghost.
Rebecca wore a simple camel coat and black trousers. No designer handbag. No diamonds. Nothing about her suggested someone chasing money.
That somehow made the situation more frightening.
“You’re Sarah,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
She studied my face.
“You look like him around the mouth.”
My throat tightened.
Arthur entered behind me.
Rebecca’s expression turned instantly colder.
“You.”
Arthur stopped.
“You know me?”
“I know who you are.”
She reached into her handbag slowly.
Marcus moved forward.
Rebecca froze.
“It’s paper.”
“Take it out slowly,” Marcus said.
She removed a weathered photograph.
A younger version of my father stood beside a blond woman outside a university dormitory.
The date written on the back was 1982.
The woman was visibly pregnant.
“My mother,” Rebecca said. “Ellen Shaw.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
He recognized the name.
“You knew,” Rebecca said.
Arthur lowered himself into a chair.
“I knew there was a possibility.”
“A possibility?”
Her voice cracked.
“My mother raised me alone in Wisconsin. She worked two jobs. She died believing Richard Montgomery abandoned us.”
I felt sick.
“My father knew about you?”
Rebecca looked at me.
“He paid support through an attorney until I turned eighteen.”
Arthur flinched.
That was confirmation.
I sat across from her.
“Why come now?”
“Because David Vance found me.”
My spine stiffened.
“When?”
“Seven weeks ago.”
Rebecca opened another folder.
Inside were printed emails.
David had contacted her from an address registered under a false consulting company.
He told her she had been cheated out of millions.
He promised lawyers.
He promised ownership.
He promised revenge.
“What did he ask you to do?” Elena said.
Rebecca laughed bitterly.
“Exactly what you think. Challenge Sarah’s trusteeship, sue the Montgomery trust, reopen the corporate charter, and force a settlement.”
“And you refused?”
“At first, I listened.”
I appreciated the honesty.
“Why?”
“Because I grew up watching my mother choose between electricity and groceries.”
She looked directly at me.
“If someone tells you there are millions connected to the father who ignored you, you listen.”
I nodded slowly.
“I would too.”
Rebecca’s eyes softened slightly.
“But then David started talking about you.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were manipulative. That you stole his daughter. That you destroyed him. That Arthur controlled you.”
She pushed another sheet toward me.
“And then he offered me thirty percent of whatever I recovered if I signed control rights over to him.”
Arthur laughed once.
Coldly.
“There he is.”
Rebecca continued.
“That’s when I researched him.”
She had discovered everything.
The yacht.
Lily’s hospitalization.
The corporate fraud.
The mistress.
The restraining order.
“I realized he wasn’t helping me,” she said. “He was using me.”
“Then why send the letter?”
“I didn’t.”
We all froze.
“What letter?” Rebecca asked.
Marcus showed her David’s note.
She read it twice.
“I’ve never heard the phrase Project Harbor.”
Arthur looked increasingly disturbed.
“If David knows that phrase, someone gave him access to restricted archival material.”
“Who could?” Elena asked.
“Only three people ever had that level of access,” Arthur said.
“Who?”
“Your father. Me.”
He paused.
“And Samuel Kerr.”
I knew the name.
Samuel Kerr had been my father’s private accountant for thirty years.
He had retired to Arizona.
Or so I thought.
Elena was already searching her tablet.
Her fingers stopped moving.
“Arthur.”
“What?”
“Samuel Kerr died eight months ago.”
My stomach dropped.
Elena turned the screen around.
The obituary was unmistakable.
Samuel had died in Scottsdale.
But another document appeared beneath it.
A property transfer.
Three weeks before his death, Samuel sold a lake house in Wisconsin.
The buyer?
Rebecca Montgomery.
Every head turned toward her.
Rebecca stared at the screen.
“I didn’t buy any lake house.”
Marcus leaned closer.
“The deed says you did.”
“I have never owned property in Wisconsin.”
Elena typed rapidly.
“Purchase price: one dollar and consideration.”
Rebecca stood.
“That is not mine.”
Arthur’s expression became grim.
“Someone used your identity.”
“Why?”
He looked at me.
“To move an asset outside the trust.”
Marcus reached for his phone.
“What asset?”
Arthur stood.
“Project Harbor wasn’t just a legal plan.”
He looked toward Rebecca.
“It was a physical archive.”
My skin prickled.
“What kind of archive?”
“Original trust instruments. Paternity correspondence. Private ledgers. Corporate founding documents.”
Rebecca whispered, “Where?”
Arthur’s eyes hardened.
“The Wisconsin lake house.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Elena finally spoke.
“And if someone transferred that property using Rebecca’s identity—”
“They may already have the archive,” Arthur finished.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A picture appeared.
David standing beside a metal document box.
May you like
Below it was one sentence.
NOW WE NEGOTIATE.
