Chapter 18
Two days later, I toldmyself I was being irrational.
The unease creeping beneath my skin, the constant prickle at the nape of my neck—it had to be my imagination.Fear had always worked that way for me, subtle and patient, coiling quietly around my spine while I pretended not to feel it.It waited until the moment I convinced myself I was safe before it struck.
Someone knew.
Someone had been alerted the instant I accessed that account, and yet nothing had happened.No strange calls.No anonymous warnings.No unfamiliar cars idling too long on my street.The absence of reaction only sharpened the dread, turning silence into something loud and watchful.
At work, I caught myself scanning the corridors, my reflection in the glass walls taut and restless.My fingers curled around the edge of my desk as I skimmed emails, waiting for an unsigned message or a cryptic threat that never came.Every shadow felt wrong.Every unfamiliar face lingered a second too long.
Nothing.
When I picked up the girls from school, I studied the line of parents with forced calm, my heart stuttering every time an unfamiliar vehicle rolled past the curb.I memorized license plates without meaning to.Counted exits.Calculated distance.
Still nothing.
The nothing felt like something.
Sleep became a suggestion rather than a reality.I twisted beneath the sheets, every creak of the house sending my pulse spiking.I left the bedside lamp on, staring at shadows that stretched and shifted along the walls, waiting for movement that never came.By morning, I was exhausted and wired, unraveling in slow motion.
Ray had done this.
I had believed I’d buried his secrets with him.Believed whatever sins he’d carried into the ground had died there, sealed beneath earth and finality.I had been wrong.
The account.The money.The fact that he’d hidden it in our daughters’ names.The weight of it sat heavy and unrelenting in my gut.Why them?Why not himself?What had he been planning?
And who else knew?
I needed to fix it.I just didn’t know how.
Going to the police should have been the obvious answer.The responsible one.But what exactly would I tell them?That I’d stumbled onto an offshore account holding three million dollars stolen from men I had no intention of ever encountering again?That my dead husband had laundered money for the Vincenzo family and used our daughters’ identities as cover?
I could already see the questions forming in their eyes, suspicion sharpening with every word.
Why did he hide it in their names?
How long have you known about the money?
I didn’t have answers.And the one person who might have been able to untangle it was the man I had no business calling.
Marco.
My hands curled into fists at the thought.No.
I considered telling Aunt Ruth, then dismissed it immediately.She had joined a bingo group, and just met a widower named Donald who’d invited her to lunch next week.I wasn’t dragging her back into the shadows again.
Our involvement with the Vincenzos was supposed to be over.Creed had wiped Ray’s debt clean.Marco made it clear that business was concluded.Finished.
But had it ever really ended?
The last time I’d seen him, Marco’s eyes had been colder than the steel at my throat.And yet, the money was still there.Untouched.
