“Your father killed Stephan. Clara was there. She saweverything,” I come right out with it. Better to tear the Band-Aid off with one swift move.
Carter stills in the middle of the room. “What did you just say?”
“Clara begged me not to tell anyone. She only told me because I caught her in a vulnerable moment after she fled from our office the day your father came to see you.”
Damon groans. “Holy shit.”
“Stephan and Margot were involved. They were having an affair for years, going behind Emmanuel’s back,” I add. “Clara caught on, eventually. She and Stephan argued about it a lot. It put a lot of strain on their relationship.”
“Those are the public arguments we heard about,” Damon recalls.
“Yes. Clara begged him to stop. Margot kept promising she’d divorce Emmanuel. It was a vicious cycle,” I say.
Carter shakes his head. “He would’ve said something.”
“Yeah, right. ‘Hey, Carter,’” I mock with plenty of sarcasm. “‘I’ve been banging your sister for the past few years. You don’t mind, do you?’” I scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous. He couldn’t tell anybody. He didn’t want to get Margot in any legal trouble either. Pretty sure there was a cheating clause in that prenup of hers. Point is, Clara isn’t the only one who found out.”
I go on to tell him precisely what Clara told me about that night. Every detail, every word, every moment up to the point where she reluctantly took Bill’s money and got out of Blackthorn Falls.
“She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time. Clara said she would’ve done things differently if she’d known. But by then, the damage was already done.”
“You’re telling me my brother-in-law and father killed my best friend, then drove Clara out of town? Am I getting that right?” Carter manages, now seated in one of the armchairs.
“I’m sorry, Carter. I believe her.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe her,” he snaps. “It’s that it fucking happened, and I knew nothing about it.Weknew nothing about it. And Margot…. Fucking hell…. Does she know? Is she complicit?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you. The drinking and pill popping make a hell of a lot more sense now,” Damon says. “It’s grief, not guilt. The way she acts…I don’t think Margot knows.”
“Jesus,” Carter exhales sharply. “My own father.”
“Clara was scared out of her mind,” I tell him. “She was young, she’d just watched her brother get murdered.”
“She could’ve?—”
“Said something?” I cut him off. “She didn’t have much of a choice that night. Your father had just murdered Stephan, Carter, her brother. She didn’t know whom to trust, whom to turn to. For all she knew, Margot might’ve had something to do with it, or maybe you wouldn’t have believed her in the first place.”
“I would’ve?—”
“Carter, stop. She was young, impressionable, terrified, and stricken with grief. What you two shared before, it wasn’t strong enough at the time to overpower everything else. It all happened so fast.”
Damon nods. “Remember all the newspaper headlines and the town gossip after Clara left? That was an all-out PR war against her. Bill must’ve made some calls, because the local press went to a hell of a lot of trouble to cast doubt over Clara and her actions. They were a few words short of blaming her directly for Stephan’s death.”
“I heard people gossiping about her for years afterward,” I add.
“She’s been running ever since. No wonder she was so secretive when she came back, why she was terrified when Bill showed up at the mansion. Dammit, it all tracks.” Damon takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. “That being said, Margot and Stephan being together does make sense.”
“What?” Carter gives him a startled glare.
“If we look back, knowing what we know now, we could all agree that the signs were there. We knew Stephan was hiding something. Margot was having issues with Emmanuel. Hell, one of the reasons why your father got her a bigger role in the company was to help stabilize her. She was distracted. Now we know why.”
Carter is still struggling with the entire concept, and I can’t blame him. He will need time to process and heal accordingly. But we still have a bigger issue to fix in the meantime.
“We need to find Clara before it’s too late, before she completely disappears,” I say. “Carter, she was willing to stickaround this time. We got her to stay, even with your father in town. We have to figure out what happened, what spooked her.”
“It was Bill. It had to be,” Damon concludes.
