Chapter 3 - The House Thomas Thought He Controlled
The woman standing beside my husband in my father’s photograph was my sister.
Sophie.
I stared at the screen until their faces blurred.
“No.”
Dad said nothing.
“That can’t be Sophie.”
“It is.”
“She hates Thomas.”
“I thought so too.”
Sophie was three years younger than me.
She had been the person who slipped birthday money into cards after Thomas began controlling our finances.
She was the person who texted me late at night asking whether I was okay.
She was also one of the few people Thomas still allowed me to see.
Allowed.
I hated that word now.
“When was this taken?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Why were you watching Thomas?”
“I wasn’t. The man who took it was looking into the supplier payments.”
I looked again.
Sophie and Thomas weren’t touching.
They weren’t kissing.
Nothing about the photograph proved an affair.
But they clearly weren’t enemies.
They were sitting together privately, documents between them.
“What documents?”
“We don’t know.”
I handed the phone back.
“I want to go home.”
Dad shook his head.
“No.”
“I need my things.”
“We can get them later.”
“My passport. Léo’s birth certificate. My laptop.”
“Police can accompany you.”
I looked toward my sleeping son.
“And I need to know what Thomas was hiding.”
The next morning, I was discharged.
Dad took us to his house.
I had not slept there since before my wedding.
My old bedroom had become a guest room, but one object remained exactly where it had always been.
A photograph of Dad and me holding a ridiculous fish when I was seventeen.
Léo pointed at it.
“Mommy, you look funny.”
I laughed.
It hurt.
But I laughed.
For the first time since the kitchen, my son smiled.
Dad made pancakes.
Léo ate three.
Then my phone started vibrating.
Thomas.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Twenty-three missed calls.
Fourteen messages.
The tone changed every few minutes.
CLAIRE, COME HOME.
We need to talk like adults.
You misunderstood what happened.
Your father is manipulating you.
Think about Léo.
Then:
If you let your father interfere, don't expect me to fix this afterward.
And finally:
You have no money. Where exactly do you think you're going?
I stared at that last message.
Dad was standing at the sink.
“He’s right.”
Dad turned.
“No, he isn’t.”
“I have seventy-three euros.”
“You have more than that.”
“No, Dad.”
“You do.”
He dried his hands.
“Come with me.”
He took me upstairs to his study.
From a locked drawer, he removed a folder.
My name was written across it.
Inside were financial documents.
I didn’t understand them at first.
Then I saw my grandfather’s name.
“What is this?”
“Your trust.”
I laughed because the idea was absurd.
“My what?”
“When your grandfather died, he left shares of Beaumont Marine to you and Sophie.”
“I know. Thomas told me they were sold years ago.”
Dad’s expression hardened.
“Thomas told you?”
“He handled the paperwork.”
“Claire, your shares were never sold.”
I stopped breathing.
Dad turned several pages toward me.
“You still own them.”
“How much?”
“Your portion isn’t enormous compared with the whole company, but the distributions have been accumulating.”
I looked at the figure.
Then looked again.
€186,420.
“That can’t be mine.”
“It is.”
I felt sick.
“Where has it been going?”
“That is the question.”
Dad showed me the account designated for distributions.
It had been opened in my name.
But I had never seen it.
The mailing address was ours.
The contact email wasn’t mine.
I recognized it.
Thomas.
My knees weakened.
“He’s been receiving the statements.”
Dad nodded.
“Apparently.”
“Can he access the money?”
“We don’t know yet.”
My hands began shaking.
The seventy-three euros I had secretly saved suddenly seemed grotesque.
I had been counting coins while more than a hundred thousand euros connected to my own inheritance existed somewhere beyond my reach.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I assumed you knew.”
“How?”
“You signed annual documents.”
“I never signed anything.”
Dad became completely still.
“What?”
“I never signed annual documents.”
He pulled one page free.
At the bottom was my name.
Claire Beaumont.
The signature looked like mine.
Almost.
But it wasn’t.
Dad reached for his phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Our attorney.”
That afternoon, the situation changed rapidly.
The attorney compared signatures.
He requested bank records.
Dad contacted the company accountant.
I sat at the dining table while people spoke in careful professional language around me.
Authorization.
Distributions.
Electronic transfers.
Beneficiary instructions.
Potential forgery.
I understood only one thing clearly.
Someone had been making decisions in my name.
At 4:12 PM, Sophie called.
I stared at her name.
Dad looked at me.
“You don’t have to answer.”
I did.
“Hello?”
“Claire.”
She sounded breathless.
“Where are you?”
“At Dad’s.”
Silence.
Then:
“You shouldn’t be there.”
Something cold moved through me.
“Why?”
“Because he’s filling your head with nonsense.”
That sentence sounded exactly like Thomas.
“Sophie, why were you meeting Thomas three weeks ago?”
Nothing.
Then she said, “Who told you that?”
“Answer me.”
“It was business.”
“What business?”
“Claire—”
“What business do you have with my husband?”
She exhaled sharply.
“You don’t understand what you’re getting involved in.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Another silence.
Then Sophie said something that changed the entire conversation.
“Did Dad show you the trust?”
I gripped the phone.
“How do you know about that?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sophie?”
“I have to go.”
“No. You’re going to tell me—”
The line disconnected.
Dad and I stared at each other.
She knew.
My sister knew about the money.
And she knew I didn’t.
That evening, police accompanied me back to the house to collect clothes and documents.
Thomas wasn’t there.
The kitchen had been cleaned.
The chair stood upright.
The floor shone.
It looked as if nothing had happened.
That disturbed me more than the mess had.
I packed quickly.
Then Léo’s voice came from his bedroom.
“Mom?”
I found him kneeling beside his toy box.
“What is it?”
He held up an old tablet.
“Daddy forgot this.”
It was Thomas’s previous tablet, one I thought he had thrown away months earlier.
The screen was cracked.
But when Léo pressed the button, it lit up.
And because Thomas had once connected it to our home network, several notifications immediately appeared.
Most were ordinary.
Then one message preview slid across the screen.
SOPHIE:
She still thinks the shares were sold.
I stopped moving.
A second notification appeared beneath it.
This one was from Thomas.
Good. Keep her away from Robert until Friday.
Friday.
It was Wednesday.
I opened the conversation.
The tablet requested a password.
I didn't know it.
But beneath the password field was a notification preview containing six words that made my blood run cold.
After Friday, Claire can't stop anything.
I looked toward the police officer standing in the hallway.
Then toward my son.
Whatever Thomas and Sophie had planned, it wasn’t finished.
May you like
And we had less than forty-eight hours to find out what Friday meant.
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