Chapter 9 - Beneath the Magnolia
After our first anniversary, Lucas brought home a dying magnolia sapling.
I told him it wouldn’t survive a Syracuse winter.
He planted it anyway.
Called it our first child.
Every spring, against all logic, it bloomed.
Police dug beneath it.
Three feet down, they found a waterproof steel box.
Inside:
The original Cross ledger.
A flash drive.
And a sealed letter addressed to me.
Victoria,
If you’re reading this, somebody finally pushed too far.
I sat on the porch where my father had thrown me out and read my dead husband’s words.
Lucas explained everything he knew.
Martin.
Natalie.
Courtney.
The freight scheme.
Terminal 12.
Then:
I don’t know who Northstar is.
But I know Northstar knows your father.
My heart sank.
Lucas had found an old photograph.
Charles at twenty-eight.
Martin at twenty-four.
And a third man.
On the back:
Northstar Project — 1998.
Dad stared.
“I’ve never seen that.”
“You’re in it.”
“I know.”
The third man was Richard Hawthorne.
Founder of Hawthorne Capital.
The minority shareholder trying to interfere with my trust.
Northstar.
Maybe.
Charles finally told the full story.
In 1998, his first trucking company nearly collapsed.
Richard Hawthorne offered financing.
Martin handled contracts.
Charles believed it was ordinary investment.
Years later, Hawthorne sold his stake but retained unusual access rights to several freight terminals.
Charles never questioned them.
Lucas did.
Hawthorne had been using the logistics network long before Martin’s modern scheme.
Martin wasn’t Northstar.
He worked for Northstar.
Richard Hawthorne was seventy-one now.
Philanthropist.
Political donor.
Almost untouchable.
But the ledger tied him to decades of hidden transactions.
Then Lucas’s flash drive gave us more.
Audio.
Hawthorne and Martin arguing.
Hawthorne:
“Gallagher is becoming a problem.”
Martin:
“I’ll handle him.”
Hawthorne:
“No accidents. No martyrs.”
That mattered.
Hawthorne didn’t order Lucas killed.
At least not there.
Martin may have acted alone.
Then another recording.
Martin speaking to someone else.
Female.
“After Lucas is gone, Charles will destroy Victoria himself.”
Courtney.
Except Natalie identified the voice.
“That isn’t Courtney.”
“Then who?”
She listened again.
Her face changed.
“That’s my mother.”
Their mother?
Martin told everyone she died twenty years earlier.
Apparently death was becoming a remarkably flexible concept in my life.
“Her name?”
Natalie swallowed.
“Diane Cross.”
Where was she?
Nobody knew.
Then Charles whispered:
“I do.”
We all turned.
He looked devastated.
“Diane was my first wife.”
The room went silent.
My mother had died when I was four.
At least that was what Dad had always told me.
Her name had been Diana Baldwin.
I stared at him.
“No.”
Charles couldn’t meet my eyes.
Diana Baldwin.
Diane Cross.
My mother.
Martin Cross’s ex-wife.
Courtney and Natalie’s mother.
May you like
Meaning my twenty-four-year-old stepmother—
was my half-sister.
