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My father-in-law was killed in a hit-and-run. But the first thing my husband said in the hospital waiting room wasn't about his grief. It was about money. "Take the seventy-five thousand dollars, Eve. Your father wasn't worth more than that." He thought the man lying in the morgue was my father. He handed me a settlement agreement that framed him as a con artist who' d staged the accident for a payday. I refused. He became a monster, threatening me before cutting me off financially. I soon discovered why: the driver was his pregnant mistress, and this was all a desperate cover-up to protect her. He was willing to destroy my family to save his new one. He called me weak and sentimental, an emotional nuisance he could easily manage. He was so sure he could break me and buy my silence. In court, his lawyer presented the settlement agreement, ready to paint me as a greedy, unstable liar. But then the judge cleared her throat to make the formal announcement. "The deceased is Mr. Gordon Charles." It wasn't my father on that morgue slab. It was his.
Contents
Chapter 1
My father-in-law was killed in a hit-and-run. But the first thing my husband said in the hospital waiting room wasn't about his grief. It was about money.
"Take the seventy-five thousand dollars, Eve. Your father wasn't worth more than that."
He thought the man lying in the morgue was my father. He handed me a settlement agreement that framed him as a con artist who' d staged the accident for a payday.
I refused. He became a monster, threatening me before cutting me off financially. I soon discovered why: the driver was his pregnant mistress, and this was all a desperate cover-up to protect her. He was willing to destroy my family to save his new one.
He called me weak and sentimental, an emotional nuisance he could easily manage. He was so sure he could break me and buy my silence.
In court, his lawyer presented the settlement agreement, ready to paint me as a greedy, unstable liar. But then the judge cleared her throat to make the formal announcement.
"The deceased is Mr. Gordon Charles."
It wasn't my father on that morgue slab. It was his.
Chapter 1
Eve Cox POV:
The first thing my husband said after his father was killed in a hit-and-run was not "How could this happen?" or "My God, my father," but "Take the seventy-five thousand dollars, Eve. Your father wasn't worth more than that."
I stared at him. The words didn't compute. They floated in the stale air of the hospital waiting room, nonsensical and sharp, like fragments of shattered glass.
"What did you say?" I asked, my voice a dry whisper.
"Seventy-five thousand dollars," Jonathan repeated, his tone impatient, as if explaining a simple concept to a child. "It' s a fair offer. Generous, even, considering the circumstances."
My mind was a fog of grief and shock. Just an hour ago, I had been kneeling on cold, rain-slicked asphalt, my hands hovering uselessly over the still, broken body of a man I loved like a father. The screech of tires, the horrifying thud, the sight of a dark sedan speeding away into the night-it all replayed in a sickening loop. Now, my husband, the man who was supposed to be my rock, was talking about money.
"Seventy-five thousand?" I repeated, the number tasting like ash in my mouth. "Jonathan, a man is dead."
"I' m aware," he snapped, his jaw tight. He ran a hand through his perfectly styled dark hair, a gesture of irritation, not distress. He was wearing the same expensive suit he' d worn to court that morning, a picture of polished success, completely detached from the tragedy unfolding around us.
"It wasn't just a man," I said, my voice trembling. "It was Gordon. It was your father."
I needed to make him understand. Gordon. The gentle, kind-hearted widower who had raised Jonathan on his own after his wife passed away. The man who taught our son, Leo, how to fish. The man who showed up on our doorstep every Sunday with a warm smile and a box of donuts, his eyes twinkling as he asked about our week.
He had been Jonathan' s entire world for so long.
Jonathan' s gaze flickered with annoyance. "Eve, let' s not be sentimental right now. This is a practical matter."
"Practical?" The word was a slap in the face. "Your father is lying in a morgue downstairs, and you' re talking about practicality?"
"We need to be smart about this," he insisted, lowering his voice and leaning closer. The familiar, expensive scent of his cologne filled my nostrils, and for the first time, it made me feel sick. "The driver... she' s young. Scared. This was a tragic accident, but dragging it through the courts will only cause more pain for everyone. This settlement is the cleanest way to close the book on this."
I shook my head, trying to clear the ringing in my ears. "I don' t understand. Who is offering a settlement? Why are you the one telling me this? The police said..."
Jonathan cut me off, his patience wearing thin. He thrust a sheaf of papers at me, clipped neatly to a leather-bound folder. "Just read it, Eve. It' s all there. A standard settlement and release. You sign it, we get the money, and this whole nightmare is over."
My hands were numb as I took the documents. My eyes scanned the legalese, the cold, black letters blurring together. Then, a phrase leaped out at me.
"...the deceased, Francis Escobar, who by darting into traffic without regard for his own safety, contributed to the unfortunate incident..."
Francis Escobar.
My father' s name.
The air left my lungs in a painful rush. It felt like being plunged into ice water. My blood ran cold, and the grief that had been a heavy shroud around me was suddenly pierced by a horrifying, sharp clarity.
"Insurance fraud?" I whispered, reading another line. The document alleged that the victim was a known opportunist who had attempted similar schemes before. It painted a picture of a desperate, conniving old man trying to score a payday.
It was a portrait of a monster. It was a description of my father.
"Jonathan," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "Have you seen the dashcam footage?"
He scoffed, a dismissive, ugly sound. "I don' t need to. I know your father, Eve. I' ve been paying his bills for years. The man was a financial black hole. Is it really so surprising he' d try something like this?"
Every word was a hammer blow. He wasn' t talking about his own father. He thought the man lying dead, the man he was so eager to slander and sell for a paltry sum, was mine.
"He lived in a small condo, Jonathan," I said, my voice shaking with a rage so profound it scared me. "A condo he and my mother bought after selling their family home-the home they sold so you could have the capital to start your law firm."
His face darkened. "Don' t you dare throw that in my face. That was an investment. And it' s not the point. The point is, he' s gone. It' s sad, yes, but it' s also... a relief. No more surprise medical bills, no more 'loans' that are never paid back. This is a chance for a clean break, for you, for us."
The people in the waiting room were starting to stare. A nurse glanced over with a look of pity. My grief, which had been raw and agonizing, was crystallizing into something else. Something hard and cold and heavy. It was the weight of a terrible truth.
"So he' s not my father anymore?" I asked, my voice flat.
Jonathan looked confused by the question. He softened his expression, placing a hand on my arm. It was a calculated gesture, the kind a lawyer uses to pacify a difficult client. "Eve, honey, I know this is hard. You' re in shock. But think about it. Seventy-five thousand dollars. It' s not nothing. We can put it towards Leo' s college fund. Think of it as... a final gift from him."
A final gift. He wanted me to take blood money for the man he thought was my father, a man whose only crime was loving his daughter enough to sacrifice everything for her happiness, and frame it as a parting gift.
A strange, chilling calm washed over me. I looked at my husband-this ambitious, handsome, utterly soulless man-and I saw him for the first time. He didn't see a grieving daughter. He saw a nuisance, an obstacle to be managed.
He saw an opportunity.
And in that moment, I understood everything. The affair. The secrets. The coldness that had crept into our marriage. It wasn' t just a rough patch. It was a rot that went straight to the bone.
"And what about family, Jonathan?" I asked, my voice laced with a dark, bitter irony he was too self-absorbed to detect. "Does that mean nothing to you?"
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