Broken by Vanessa Vale & Helen Hardt

Author:Vanessa Vale & Helen Hardt [Vale, Vanessa & Hardt, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bridger Media & Helen Hardt LLC

16

CHANCE

* * *

Unreal.

Fucking unreal.

The Journal of Business Ethics is hooked by a simple string to a gate latch on the other side. So simple…and I never knew it was here.

How could I? I never come in here.

The small room is dark except for the light trailing in from my father’s office. I scan the wall, find a light switch, and a fluorescent bulb bathes the room in harsh white light.

Boxes. Mountains of cardboard boxes.

God damn.

If my father was hiding anything, it’s in this windowless room.

But where to begin?

The space itself isn’t large—maybe twelve by twelve feet—but the boxes are piled floor to ceiling and about four rows deep.

Does Shankle know about this place? I doubt it. Shankle was my father’s personal attorney for the ranching side of his business, and he swears everything was run by the book. I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise, as I’ve had a hand in that business for the last fifteen years. I’ve worked the ranch. I’ve seen the books.

No. I won’t find anything about the ranch in here.

If Shankle’s shady, he wouldn’t have kept these boxes here to be found. Sure, I lived in the house my entire life and never knew it existed, but hiding the evidence to crimes here? With my father dead, Shankle would be the one to go to jail if he’d helped.

I gave Miles and Austin both the day off, and that must have been divine providence because I need to be alone for this. Everything here happened before them. Before our father died. I need to work through it all on my own, get my head around everything because I was here, living, working while whatever shit he did occurred right under my nose.

He wasn’t just an asshole and a shitty father, he was a criminal. Who would keep a hidden room if he didn’t have shady shit to hide?

I pull the nearest box down from a stack I can reach and lift the lid. Stacked manila folders with no notation as to their contents. No notation on the box either, until I look closely. Written by hand in small letters that are hidden by the lid when the box is closed is the name Diana Lovering.

I drop my mouth open. Diana Lovering is Austin’s mother. I pull out a folder and open it. Papers fall to the floor, and I sit down on the hardwood, gathering them. They’re Diana’s medical records, all about her MS. He was keeping tabs on his ex. Recently, too.

Why? I don’t know, but if there’s a box for Austin’s mother…

There may be a box containing information on my mother.

I work like a fiend pulling down boxes, lifting the lids, and checking the contents. Most names I don’t recognize. I don’t find Miles’s mother. I don’t find my mother, Lisabeth Davies. I don’t find Racehorse Hauling or Joseph Hopkins. At least not yet.

Still I keep at it, until—

“Fuck.” I thread my fingers through my hair.

The name on the box I’m holding is Linda Marsh.

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