Chapter 6 - Her Voice
Charles stopped the recording.
“No.”
Rebecca sat still.
He stood too quickly and knocked his chair backward.
“No.”
“Charles—”
“She said Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“You knew.”
“I knew she suspected him.”
“She named him.”
“In the recording.”
Charles paced.
His face had gone pale.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because she told me not to.”
“That excuse is finished.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
His voice rose.
Rebecca stood.
“You think I enjoyed carrying this?”
“I think you obeyed a dead woman while her daughter kept seeing the man she feared.”
That hit.
Rebecca flinched.
Charles immediately regretted it.
He looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
She said nothing.
He righted the chair.
Then sat.
“Keep playing.”
Rebecca pressed the screen.
Eleanor’s voice returned.
“I need you to listen before you do anything. Please. I know you. You’re probably already standing up.”
Charles closed his eyes.
Rebecca let out the faintest breath.
Eleanor continued.
“Sit down.”
Charles actually did.
“I don’t know yet whether Thomas meant to hurt me.”
Charles opened his eyes.
“What?”
Rebecca raised a hand.
Keep listening.
“I know how that sounds. I know what I told Rebecca. I know what happened to the medication. But I need you to understand the difference between what I know and what I fear.”
Eleanor coughed on the recording.
Charles’s fingers curled around the edge of the desk.
“Thomas has been moving money.”
Charles looked toward Rebecca.
She nodded once.
“I found transfers tied to one of Dad’s old investment vehicles. At first I thought Thomas was reorganizing assets. Then I found liabilities he never disclosed.”
A pause.
“Large ones.”
Charles’s face hardened.
“He lost money,” Rebecca whispered.
The recording continued.
“I think he borrowed against family-controlled assets to cover losses in private investments.”
Charles whispered, “Jesus.”
“And I think he believed Sophie’s trust could help him hide it.”
Charles stood again.
Eleanor’s voice almost seemed to catch him.
“Don’t interrupt me, Charles.”
He froze.
Rebecca looked down.
Even now, Eleanor knew.
Charles sat.
“I confronted him. He denied it. Then he told me I didn’t understand the structure. Maybe he believed that. Maybe he needed to believe it.”
The recording crackled.
“After that, my medication started changing.”
Charles felt sick.
“I can’t prove Thomas changed it himself. I need you to remember that.”
Rebecca’s eyes were fixed on the phone.
“But he had access. He knew my schedule. He knew when you were gone.”
Charles looked toward the door.
Sophie was upstairs.
Thomas had taken her for ice cream two weeks ago.
His stomach turned.
“I asked him to stay away from the house. He came anyway.”
A longer pause.
“He said I was destroying the family because I didn’t understand what he had sacrificed for you.”
Charles frowned.
Rebecca stopped the recording.
“What?”
“Why did you stop?”
“Because this part matters.”
“All of it matters.”
“Thomas had spent years feeling like the poor relation.”
Charles stared at her.
“Thomas grew up with us.”
“Not like you.”
Charles said nothing.
Rebecca continued.
“Eleanor said he resented always being the person who managed the Mercer fortune but never truly belonged to it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe.”
“He was compensated extremely well.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“That doesn’t cure resentment.”
Charles hated the sentence because it sounded true.
He remembered Thomas at twenty-two, standing beside Charles at his graduation party while journalists photographed the Mercer heir.
Thomas had jokingly called himself “the spare.”
Everyone laughed.
Maybe Thomas hadn’t.
Rebecca pressed play.
Eleanor’s voice returned.
“I think Thomas convinced himself he was borrowing money he deserved.”
A faint sound.
Paper shifting.
“When I threatened to take everything to Charles, he panicked.”
Charles leaned forward.
“He asked me to give him one month.”
Another cough.
“I said no.”
Then Eleanor’s voice became quieter.
“Three nights later, I woke up on the bathroom floor.”
Charles closed his eyes.
He remembered that night.
Rosa had called him in Los Angeles.
Eleanor had fallen.
Doctors blamed weakness.
“I don’t know if Thomas put anything in my medication. Rebecca found the wrong dosage, but there are other people in this house. I will not accuse him of something I cannot prove.”
Charles whispered, “You should have.”
Rebecca looked at him.
Eleanor kept speaking.
“But if something happens to me, investigate the money.”
There it was.
The real instruction.
Not revenge.
Evidence.
“Follow the accounts. Follow the access records. Follow the pharmacy.”
Charles looked up.
Rebecca said quietly, “That’s why I waited.”
The recording continued.
“And protect Sophie.”
Eleanor’s voice cracked.
For the first time, she sounded frightened.
Not for herself.
“Thomas loves her.”
Charles’s face tightened.
“I believe that. That may be the worst part.”
Rebecca wiped her cheek.
“If he is desperate enough to frighten me, I don’t know what else desperation could make him do.”
Charles stood.
This time Eleanor did not tell him to sit.
He walked to the window.
Behind him, the recording continued.
“Charles, you are going to blame yourself.”
His shoulders tightened.
“You shouldn’t have traveled so much.”
Charles turned.
Rebecca’s eyes widened slightly.
Eleanor continued.
“I know that sounds cruel.”
Charles almost laughed.
It was cruel.
And deserved.
“I needed you home. I didn’t ask clearly enough. You thought doctors and staff and money could fill the spaces you left.”
Charles sat slowly.
“You were wrong.”
His eyes filled.
“But I was wrong too. I kept secrets because I thought I was protecting you.”
Charles pressed his fists to his forehead.
Rebecca reached toward the phone.
He stopped her.
“No.”
The recording continued.
“If we had trusted each other with the ugly parts, maybe I wouldn’t be making this.”
Charles cried then.
Silently.
No dramatic collapse.
No sound.
Just tears from a man who had spent his life believing control was strength.
Eleanor’s voice softened.
“I love you.”
Charles looked at the phone.
“I love you too,” he whispered.
“And I need you to do something harder than revenge.”
A pause.
“Find the truth.”
Then the recording ended.
The silence afterward felt impossible.
Rebecca sat across from him.
Neither spoke.
Finally Charles asked, “Why did she mention Sophie recognizing you?”
Rebecca swallowed.
“There’s another file.”
Charles looked up sharply.
“What?”
“A shorter one.”
She opened the phone.
“Recorded the next day.”
Charles stared at her.
Rebecca pressed play.
Eleanor’s voice was weaker.
“Rebecca, if Sophie remembers you someday, tell Charles to ask her about the red bottle.”
Charles frowned.
The recording ended.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“What red bottle?”
“I don’t know.”
Charles stood.
Sophie.
He went upstairs.
She was sitting on the floor of her playroom arranging wooden animals.
Charles crouched beside her.
“Sophie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember Mommy’s medicine?”
She nodded vaguely.
“Do you remember a red bottle?”
Her hands stopped.
Charles felt his pulse jump.
Sophie looked up.
“Uncle Thomas had it.”
Everything inside Charles went still.
“What did he do with it?”
Sophie frowned, trying to reach into a memory three years old.
“He said Mommy took the wrong one.”
Charles’s mouth went dry.
“What happened then?”
Sophie looked down at the wooden elephant in her hand.
“He put it in his coat.”
Charles stood slowly.
Thomas had not merely been near the medication.
Sophie had seen him remove evidence.
May you like
And Thomas Blake was still in her life.
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