Chapter 3 - Shadows of the Past
The gate latch clicked shut, echoing in the brief lull of the garden party. I let out a long, shuddering breath I hadn't realized I was holding. The tension in my shoulders felt like coiled steel.
“Clara?” David murmured, turning me gently toward him. His eyes were full of concern. “Are you okay? Do you want me to pause the party, take Noah inside?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and forcing my breathing to steady. “No, today is Noah’s day. I refuse to let that man steal another hour of my life.”
Maya, my younger cousin—who had been raised by the same aunt that took me in—hurried over, sensing the shift in the air. “Was that... was that him?” she asked, her voice tight with suppressed anger. “Did Arthur just show up here?”
“Yes,” I said simply.
“Do you want me to call Aunt Helen? Or the police?” Maya reached for her phone.
“He left before I had to call anyone,” I said, managing a grim smile. “For now, he’s gone. But Maya... he knew too much. He knew about the company valuation. He knew my home address. People in our hometown didn't even know what I did for a living; I keep a very low profile online.”
Maya’s face paled. “You think someone gave him the information?”
“I know they did,” I said.
We brushed it off for the sake of the children, finishing the cake cutting, the chaotic pin-the-tail-on-the-dinosaur game, and the distribution of good-bye goody bags. But as the last of the parents loaded their exhausted toddlers into SUVs and minivans, the heavy knot in my stomach tightened.
Once the house was finally quiet and Noah was fast asleep in his dinosaur-themed bedroom, David and I sat at the kitchen island. The laptop was open in front of me.
“We need to look into this,” David said, sliding a cup of chamomile tea toward me. “People don't just magically show up at a secure suburban home demanding exact figures unless they have a source.”
“My corporate registry filings,” I murmured, my fingers flying across the trackpad. “My business address is registered in Delaware, but my personal mailing address is tied to our LLC filings for tax optimization. It’s public record if you know where to look, but you have to pay for the database access.”
“And Arthur couldn't afford a cup of coffee without panhandling, let alone a corporate data subscription,” David agreed. “So who paid for it, or who gave it to him?”
I logged into my security dashboard, pulling up the footage from the patio camera. I exported the high-resolution file of my father’s arrival. As I paused the video and zoomed in on his face, something else caught my attention. In the background, just outside the perimeter fence, a sleek black sedan had been idling by the curb. When my father walked out, he didn't walk down the street toward public transit; he got into the passenger side of that sedan.
I enhanced the license plate frame, running it through a private investigative database I had access to through a business partner who specialized in corporate security.
The results popped up within seconds.
May you like
The car was registered to a legal firm downtown: Vance & Sterling Corporate Recovery.
I stared at the screen, a cold realization washing over me. This wasn't just a random act of a deadbeat father looking for booze money. This was a coordinated, targeted probe. Someone was testing my defenses.
