Page 317 of The Lies We Play

His face is controlled, but his eyes are not.

He says, very quietly, “Liv.”

“They were threatened.”

His jaw hardens. “Why didn’t I think that was happening?”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“I was threatened,” he says. “They threatened my family too.”

“My mother told me on her deathbed she’d let the wrong fear make the choice.”

“Did she?”

“She did. I thought she meant fear of getting treatment. Fear of maybe lasting longer and suffering more. Fear of leaving Dad.” I look down at the letter. “She didn’t mean that.”

Creed’s hand curls into a fist against his thigh.

I go back to the letter.

“I am a man who spent thirty-six years in insurance underwriting, which is the profession that taught me that paperwork tells you what people want you to believe, and the absence of paperwork tells you what they did. I have spent the last decade collecting absences. The Saint Claires have been very, very careful, and they have not been careful enough.”

I look into the folder.

There are printed emails. Screenshots of texts between Whit Whelan and an assistant whose name appears in three different threads under three different spellings. Bank statements. Receipts. Notes with threats. A log of calls, times, and whatever was said on the other side of the line.

Bribes.

Blackmail.

Threats.

My parents didn't simply choose wrong.

They were cornered—scared.

I go back to the letter.

“Livia. I have built you a case. I have put it in this folder. I am sorry, I was a man who loved you so much I could not bear to risk you. If you can forgive me, do. If you can’t, don’t. Either is yours to choose. The folder is the apology I owed you. Use it with caution.”

The letter blurs.

My breath breaks before the rest of me does.

I press the pages to my chest because I do not know where else to put my hands. A sound leaves me, small at first, then not small at all. It comes from a place ten years deep, from the girl who believed she had been abandoned, from the woman who stayed gone because staying gone seemed to be the only thing left she knew how to do.

Creed is on his knees beside the chair.

I don’t know when he moved.

His hand is on my knee.

“Liv.”

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t have to be.”