I stared at that dark blue folder for what felt like an hour. My fingers traced the worn edges, the same edges my father had touched countless times before he passed away.
Gregory Hayes. My father. The man who built an empire from nothing.
“Mama?”
Mia’s small voice drifted through the hallway, pulling me back to the present.
I quickly slid the folder back under the box of old toys. My heart pounded as I walked to her room, pressing my palm against her warm forehead.
“Bad dream, sweet girl?” I whispered.
“There was a monster under my bed,” she mumbled, already half-asleep.
“Monsters aren’t real, baby. I checked this morning.”
She smiled softly and curled back into her pillow, and I stood there watching her breathe. Her eyelashes were still damp from crying earlier when she’d asked why she couldn’t have the princess backpack from the store. I had told her we’d get it “next month.”
Next month never came. Not for princess backpacks. Not for warm winter boots. Not for birthdays that I insisted I didn’t need to celebrate.
I walked back to the storage room and pulled the folder out again.
Under the dim light of my phone screen, I opened it for the first time in three years. The pages smelled like my father’s cologne. Hugo Boss. He wore it every day, even when he had nowhere to go.
I read the first document.
Then the second.
By the time I reached the third page, my hands were shaking so badly I had to sit down on the floor.
My father had invested his entire life savings into a technology firm called Apex Vanguard just months before his death. He had transferred all of his shares into my name through a trust that he established, and he had named me as the sole beneficiary.
I had known about the trust. I had just never opened the statements.
Gavin had never once asked about the folder. He had never once asked about my father’s investments or what he had left behind. He just assumed there was nothing, because I lived like there was nothing, because I had given up everything to stay home and raise his child.
I opened the latest statement.
The number at the bottom made me inhale sharply.
$61.4 million.
I sat there in the darkness of that cluttered storage room and laughed until tears streamed down my face. Three years. Three years I had stretched his pathetic $1,800 a month while sitting on $61.4 million that my father had left me.
Three years of eating plain soup because Gavin said we had to save for the mortgage.
Three years of feeling guilty every time I bought a $3 coffee.
Three years of shrinking myself so small that I could fit inside his selfish, tiny world.
And all along, he thought he was in control.
I called Charles Montgomery at 11:47 p.m. He was my father’s wealth advisor, a man who had known me since I was eleven years old. He had called me twice a year for the past three years to check in on the trust, and I had brushed him off every single time, telling him my husband preferred to handle the household finances.
“Mrs. Hayes,” Charles said, his voice careful even at this hour. “It’s so good to hear from you.”
“Charles, I need to know the exact value of everything my father left me.”
There was a pause.
“Are you all right, Nora?”
“I’m fine. I just need the numbers.”
“Give me ten minutes. I’ll send it to your email.”
Ten minutes and eleven seconds later, my phone vibrated with an encrypted document. I opened it and scanned through the portfolio.
Apex Vanguard’s portfolio had grown exponentially since my father’s death. The company had acquired major stakes in regional tech companies, real estate holdings, and even a small percentage of a business that made my blood run cold when I read the name.
Summit Crest Group.
The company that employed my husband as a regional director. The company that had thirty employees watching him with his mistress.
I owned 2.7 percent of the holding group that had a voice in Summit Crest’s investor decisions. Not enough to fire him directly, but enough to be in the room when questions were asked. Enough to know where the bodies were buried when inspections were done.
