Chapter 15 - Flynn's Last Secret
The email was short.
Flynn claimed there was another account.
Not stolen money.
Money he had secretly moved away from Sloane and Aidan before the honeymoon.
Twenty-three million dollars.
He wanted me to know where it was.
I immediately contacted Ruiz.
Investigators confirmed the account.
Flynn surrendered every dollar.
“Why now?” I asked through prison glass weeks later.
He looked older.
Prison had removed the polished version of him.
“No reason you'll believe.”
“Try me.”
“I don't want it.”
“You murdered people in your imagination for it.”
“I know.”
“And now money disgusts you?”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“I disgust me.”
I said nothing.
He slid a document toward the glass.
“I signed everything.”
The money would be returned to victims of Sloane's schemes.
I studied him.
“Why did you ask to see me?”
“To say goodbye.”
“You already had that chance.”
“I know.”
There it was again.
Those two words.
But this time I did not become angry.
I simply felt finished.
Flynn looked at his hands.
“I used to imagine what I'd buy.”
“Don't.”
He nodded.
“I won't.”
I stood.
“Claire?”
I stopped.
“I hope you have a good life.”
I looked at the man I once planned to grow old beside.
“You won't be part of it.”
“I know.”
I walked away.
I never visited again.
The recovered money helped dozens of families whose businesses Sloane had destroyed.
Rebecca started a legal fund for financial-crime victims.
My father retired.
Mostly.
He still called the office every morning.
I became chair of Whitmore Maritime.
Not because I inherited it.
Because the board elected me.
My first major decision was creating an independent ethics and security division.
Daniel became director of maritime safety.
Captain Hale returned to sea.
My mother traveled.
For pleasure this time.
Life became wonderfully ordinary.
Coffee.
Meetings.
Birthdays.
Arguments about dinner.
Rain that was simply rain.
Then, one afternoon, I received the finalized annulment documents.
The marriage was legally erased.
I stared at my old name.
Claire Whitmore.
It felt right.
That evening, I drove to my parents' house.
Dad grilled steaks badly.
Mom complained.
I fixed them.
We ate outside.
No bodyguards hovered nearby anymore.
My father raised his glass.
“To Claire.”
“No.”
They looked at me.
“To us.”
My mother smiled.
“To us.”
Glasses touched.
The sound reminded me briefly of champagne glasses aboard the yacht.
But memories no longer owned sounds.
We did.
Later, Dad handed me a small envelope.
“What?”
“Open it.”
Inside were keys.
Yacht keys.
“I transferred ownership.”
“Dad.”
“You kept her. You should own her.”
I stared at him.
Then laughed.
“You gave me the crime scene?”
“A very expensive crime scene.”
Mom slapped his arm.
I laughed harder.
And that was when I knew I was healing.
Not when I stopped remembering.
When remembering no longer stopped me from laughing.
I accepted the keys.
There was one place I wanted to take the yacht.
May you like
The exact coordinates where Flynn had planned for me to disappear.
I wanted to return there—not as his victim, but as the woman who had come home.
