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She nodded, swallowing visibly.
“If he can hide a property investment,” Rock said, “he can easily forge a flight manifest.”
“Those have to be filed with the FAA,” Charlie said.
“The FAA is a government agency,” I said. “Government employees are often underpaid.”
“So they’re ripe for bribes,” Charlie said. “Got it.”
“Still, it’s worth a look.” I made a note. “I’ll have Buck investigate.”
Rock nodded. “I wonder…”
“What?” I asked.
“If this Irene Lucent lives on that island.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Why would Dad keep a first wife on the side, though? Why not just divorce her and marry Mom?”
“I may know why,” Mom said quietly.
All gazes flew to her.
“I signed a contract before our marriage,” she said.
“A pre-nup?” Lacey asked.
“No. I refused to sign a pre-nup. In retrospect, that was a mistake. I could have protected myself as well as your father. But I did sign a confidentiality agreement.”
“Why?” Lacey asked. “Why would you need to keep anything confidential before you were married?”
Mom cleared her throat. “I had some money. Not just some, actually. A lot of it.”
“We know that,” I said.
Our mother had come from rich Massachusetts politicians. She’d been worth millions, until her father lost it all in a sham oil investment overseas. This wasn’t new information. Still, she’d had a hefty trust fund when she married Dad.
“Your great-grandfather, who you never knew, was corrupt as they came,” Mom said. “He laundered all his money through Europe, and somehow, it ended up in a trust fund for yours truly.”
“What?” Rock said. “You’re not talking about your original trust fund?”
Mom nodded.
“What money?” Rock went on. “How did he—”
“He was a politician in cahoots with the mafia,” she said. “Your grandparents—my mom and dad—never talked about it. Somehow, all his laundered money ended up mine.”
“Why would he give it all to you?” I asked.
She sighed. “I was his favorite. Unfortunately.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “It wasn’t your father who…”
“No,” she said sullenly. “It was my grandfather.”
“Close your eyes and think of diamonds,” Riley said quietly, her eyes full of anger.
Mom cleared her throat. “Anyway, Derek found out somehow about the nearly a billion dollars that would come to me on my twenty-fifth birthday. Mind you, even I didn’t know about it at the time. My parents never told me.”
“Did they even know?”
“Maybe they didn’t. I have no idea. Once they found out how corrupt Grandpa Larson was, they cut him out of our lives.”
“How old were you then?” I asked.
She breathed in. “I was fifteen, Reid. Fifteen. My grandfather had been molesting me since I was seven.”
Silence for a few moments.
None of us wanted to think about what a degenerate had done to our mother, but personally I couldn’t forgive her for not helping Riley.
Neither could Riley, evidently.
“Fuck you, Mom.” Riley stood, her fists clenched.
“Hey, honey,” Matt soothed. “It’s okay.”
“What about any of this is okay, Matt?” Riley yelled.
“None of this is okay,” Matt said. “But we need to get to the bottom of your father’s murder. After that, you can decide how to deal with your relationship with your mother.”
Riley sat down. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You never have to be sorry,” I said. “You’re right to be angry with her. We all are.”
Riley nodded as Matt entwined his fingers with hers.
“How are we just finding out about all this now?” I asked my mother.
She scoffed. “How do you think? I signed a confidentiality agreement promising never to tell where the money came from, and your father made it all go away. He had my trust fund, nine hundred and fifty million dollars. Easy enough to wipe out stuff he didn’t want anyone to see. Then, with the rest, he built up Wolfe Enterprises into a billion-dollar company.”
“And you’ve kept this from us all these years?” I shook my head.
“I didn’t have a choice. I signed a contract.”
“Were you forced to sign?”
She laughed lightly. “I was not. I thought I was in love with the bastard.”
“What about your divorce?”
“He took care of me. I hated him by then, so I didn’t care about the marriage. He paid me off, and I was just as happy to be rid of him.”
None of us could dispute that.
“And you really never knew about Irene Lucent?” Rock asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I believe her,” I said. “We talked at length about this yesterday.”
“All right.” Rock drew in a deep breath. “Our working theory is that Dad wanted to fake his death. Nieves Romero intercepted the call he made to me pretending to be Reid. Somehow she and her shady sister got involved, and they went to Hoss and Manny. Which means…”
“Fuck,” I said. “It means that was the leak. That’s how Father Jim—or whoever ultimately offed Dad—found out about his plan.”
“Why would he want you to know, though?” Roy asked Rock. “Why would he call you, pretending to be Reid, and tell you about the hit?”
