Chapter 8
Jocelyn reached for the heavy brass handle of the front door.
“Wait!” Katherine screamed, scrambling across the floor on her knees, dragging her ruined silk dress through the spilled red wine. “Jocelyn, wait! You can’t do this to me! You don’t understand what Dad did! It wasn’t just me!”
Richard’s head snapped up. “Katherine, shut your mouth!”
“No! I won't go down alone!” Katherine shrieked, pointing an acrylic nail straight at Richard. “Tell her about David, Dad! Tell her why David was sent back to the front lines!”
Jocelyn stopped.
Her hand remained frozen on the brass handle. The entire world seemed to narrow to a microscopic point, the sound of her own heartbeat thumping violently against her eardrums.
Slowly, carefully, Jocelyn turned around. She shifted Clara to her other hip, her eyes locking onto Katherine with the intensity of a laser sight.
“What did you just say?” Jocelyn whispered.
“Katherine, I swear to God, if you say another word—!” Richard roared, lunging forward with a sudden burst of frantic, terrified energy, his hands raised to silence his daughter.
“He paid for David’s transfer!” Katherine screamed, backing away from Richard’s reach while looking directly into Jocelyn’s eyes. “David was scheduled to be stationed in Germany! He had the orders signed! But Dad didn't want you living in Europe with a soldier! He wanted you to sign over your grandmother’s inheritance trust before you left the country! So he called his friend at the Pentagon and had David’s battalion reassigned to the Helmand Province!”
The silence that fell over the foyer was not quiet; it was an extinction-level vacuum.
Eleanor froze, her mouth agape, her eyes widening in horror as she looked at her husband. “Richard... you didn’t. Tell me you didn't do that.”
Richard stood frozen in the center of the foyer, his chest heaving, his face drained of all color, unable to speak.
Jocelyn set Clara gently down onto the marble floor.
“Clara, sweetheart,” Jocelyn whispered, her voice impossibly calm, impossibly steady. “Go stand by the front door. Look at the garden outside. Do not turn around.”
Clara looked at her mother’s face, sensed the absolute terror in the air, and obediently walked to the threshold, her small hands resting against the glass pane, staring out at the manicured lawn.
Jocelyn walked back into the center of the foyer.
She stopped three feet from Richard. Her hands hung loose at her sides. She looked at the man who had raised her, the man who had called her weak, the man who had stolen her husband’s life to protect a family bank account.
“Is it true?” Jocelyn asked.
Richard swallowed hard, his throat dry, his hands beginning to shake uncontrollably. “Jocelyn... listen to me. You were twenty-four. You were throwing your life away on a boy with no prospects. Your grandmother left you forty percent of the Keller foundation, and if you moved to Frankfurt, that capital would have been lost to the family—!”
“Did you pay to send my husband to Afghanistan?” Jocelyn asked, her voice barely louder than a breath, but carrying the weight of a guillotine.
“I didn't know he was going to die!” Richard yelled, his voice cracking into high, pathetic desperation. “It was supposed to be a nine-month deployment! He was supposed to come back, realize the military was a dead end, and take the corporate job I offered him! I didn’t plant the roadside bomb, Jocelyn! I didn’t pull the trigger!”
“You sent him to a war zone,” Jocelyn said, “so you could keep forty percent of a trust fund.”
“I was protecting the empire!” Richard screamed, tears finally spilling from his cold, aged eyes. “Everything I did, I did for this family! For our legacy!”
“You murdered the father of my child,” Jocelyn said.
She reached into her purse for the third time.
She didn't pull out a folder. She pulled out a sleek, black encrypted satellite phone.
She dialed three digits.
“Nathan,” Jocelyn spoke into the receiver, her eyes never leaving Richard’s graying face. “Execute Phase Three.”
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Nathan’s voice came back without hesitation: “Phase Three involves the Department of Defense Inspector General, Jocelyn. There is no coming back from that. Your father will face federal treason and bribery charges.”
“Execute it,” Jocelyn said. “Now.”
