47. Caleb
CALEB
My pulse thudded in my ears.
Whatever was hidden inside that folder had been buried for years—protected, manipulated, twisted into a version of the truth I had carried like a weapon against the woman I loved.
Beneath the anger and the pride and the years of resentment, there had always been a quiet voice whispering that something didn’t add up.
That she hadn’t been lying.
That I had been wrong.
I swallowed hard and drew in a slow breath.
Then I opened the folder.
It contained a video clip.
I clicked the button and played the video.
The screen flickered to life.
It was a clip from one of the cameras in my parents’ house facing the front door.
A car was parked outside.
Two people sat inside.
It looked like a man in the driver’s seat, though I couldn’t tell clearly yet.
Then the passenger door opened.
A woman stepped out.
She had a sling across her arm.
Two seconds later, she turned around.
My breath stopped.
Jiya.
She opened the rear passenger door and pulled out two bags.
I immediately recognized them.
They were the same bags my family had put the money in for Jeremy.
My stomach clenched painfully.
I watched as she walked to the front door and dropped the bags there.
She opened them, took out the wads of cash, and held them up to the camera, so it could see that it was money.
Then she placed the cash back inside and tilted the bags, showing their contents clearly.
Next, she pulled out a piece of paper, wrote a note, and placed it carefully on top of the bags.
She turned, walked down the steps, and entered the car again on the passenger side.
The man in the driver’s seat turned toward the camera at that exact second.
It was Alex.
My stomach clenched so hard it felt like a fist had tightened around my insides.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Is this real?
My hand trembled as I reached for the mouse.
I checked the date and the time stamp on the video again, forcing myself to focus, to read every number carefully.
It was the next day after Jeremy had kidnapped the girls.
I stared at the laptop screen, my vision blurring for a second before I blinked hard and forced myself to keep looking.
My mother had shown my family and me a clipping of when the bags were dropped at Jiya’s apartment.
I had watched that video so many times over the past years—obsessively—trying to read her expression, searching for guilt, for deception, for anything that would justify the anger I carried toward her.
All I had seen was her face.
Now, as the memory resurfaced, something new cut through the fog.
She had a sling.
She had been shot too.
I dragged in a shaky breath and watched the current video again.
Jiya had returned the money. She had placed it at the door herself—deliberately and openly. But what about the bag in her house? Had she come back and taken just one?
I rewound the clip and watched it again.
I paused the video at the bags, leaning closer to the screen, my pulse pounding in my ears.
I closed my eyes and tried to recollect the bag I had seen in Jiya’s house—the one my mother had shown us, the one that had convinced all of us she had stolen the money.
Both were leather duffel bags.
But then the details came into focus.
The handles were different.
The colours were different.
Heat rushed to my face, my cheeks burning with shame as if the truth itself had slapped me. My chin dropped to my chest, and I buried my face in my hands, shaking my head slowly.
How had I not seen it before? How had I been so blind?
My eyes flicked back to the laptop screen.
There were more files on the USB.
The cursor blinked quietly on the screen.
My hand hovered over the mouse again, my fingers tense, my instincts screaming at me to stop while there was still time.
But I couldn’t look away.
I clicked the next folder.
INVESTIGATION — N. RODRIGUEZ
My stomach tightened as the contents appeared on the screen, arranged in neat rows, each document labelled. The sight alone made my chest ache.
This was not curiosity or casual concern.
My mother had documented Jiya’s life with disturbing precision, building a case against someone she had already decided to hate.
I swallowed hard and opened the first file.
The report confirmed what I already knew about Jiya’s childhood—her years in the orphanage, the incomplete records, and the absence of clear information about her parents.
It was written in a detached, clinical tone that reduced her life to dates and observations, stripping away the resilience and quiet strength I had come to admire in her.
Still, nothing in those early pages surprised me.
What stopped me was the next section.
My breath slowed as I read the details more carefully, making sure I had not misunderstood what I was seeing.
A DNA test had been conducted.
For the first time, two names appeared beside Jiya’s—names connected to a part of her life she had never known.
Karena Townsend.
Carlos Sanchez.
My mother had discovered who Jiya's parents were years ago. She had known the truth all this time and kept it hidden, as though it belonged to her instead of Jiya.
I leaned back slightly in my chair, my thoughts racing as the weight of that discovery began to sink in. My mother had been sitting on answers she had no right to keep. Instead, those answers had been quietly locked away, withheld without explanation.
A photograph attached to the file caught my attention.
It showed a drinking glass—one from my own penthouse.
I recognized the design immediately because I had bought that particular set after Jiya mentioned she liked them when she saw them on the television show Scandal.
She had stayed at my place after her surgery, trusting me enough to feel safe there, and the realization that my mother had taken that glass without her knowledge left a cold, uncomfortable weight in my chest.
I opened the next document, my focus sharpening as the name Carlos Sanchez appeared again, this time accompanied by details about his occupation and employment history.
He had worked for our company.
A slow tension began to build inside me as I continued reading.
The document described an accident at one of our facilities, a mechanical failure that had caused severe injuries while he was on the job.
My eyes moved quickly across the page, searching for the date, and when I found it, my chest tightened.
The accident—and the death that followed—had happened two years before Jiya and I had ever met.
The significance of that timeline sank in heavily.
Carlos Sanchez was not just a name on a report. He was Jiya’s father, and he had died while working for the Evans company, long before our lives had crossed paths.
I read the medical details carefully, noting the severity of the injuries and the urgency of the treatment that had been recommended.
The situation had been critical, and the doctors had advised immediate surgery to prevent his condition from worsening. The cost of that procedure had been substantial, and without it, his prognosis had been bleak.
As I continued reading, another detail caught my attention and made my grip tighten on the edge of the desk.
He had been given a limited window of time to survive without treatment. The report explained that his injuries would eventually lead to fatal complications if intervention did not happen quickly.
My eyes drifted downward to a handwritten note at the bottom of the page.
It was my mother’s handwriting.
The message was brief, direct, and disturbingly final.
She had acknowledged the request for financial assistance and concluded that no action should be taken because of potential liability risks.
I stared at the note for several seconds, reading the words again as a wave of heat spread through my chest.
Questions began to form in my mind, one after another.
I could not understand why he had reached out to my mother personally, what connection existed between them, or why none of this had ever been mentioned to me before.
I opened the next file and found a copy of an email he had written.
The message was written by a man who understood the seriousness of his situation but still held on to hope. He did not demand anything or make threats. Instead, he asked for assistance with quiet dignity, explaining that he needed medical treatment to survive.
I leaned back slowly in my chair after reading the email.
It was impossible to ignore the humanity in his request, or the desperation that must have driven him to write it.
The next set of notes revealed my mother’s assessment of the situation.
I continued reading until I reached the final document.
It was a death record.
Carlos Sanchez had died from complications related to his injuries.
I stared at the screen, absorbing the information.
My jaw set hard as new questions began to rise in my mind, circling relentlessly as I tried to make sense of everything I had just learned. I could not understand why this information had been kept from her, why it had never been shared with me, or what had truly happened after the accident.
I closed my eyes briefly and drew in a slow breath.
I opened my eyes, and my gaze drifted back to the folder sitting on the desk beside the laptop, heavy with secrets that had been hidden from me for years.
With trembling fingers, I opened it again.
There were two sets of pictures of Caroline and me.
I stared at them, my eyes scanning every detail, searching for differences—anything that didn’t belong.
At first, they looked identical, but then I noticed it.
The date stamps.
They were different.
A sick, nauseating feeling crawled up my throat.
What had my mother done?
My hands started to shake, the tremor spreading from my fingers to my arms, to my entire body. My stomach churned violently, bile rising in the back of my throat.
Then I saw it.
A handwritten note by Jiya.
I picked it up, my fingers brushing over the paper.
Eleanor,
Thanks, but no thanks. I never wanted your family’s money. Not before... not now... Never!
Nyah
This was what she had written… what she had placed on the bags.
My stomach dropped.
She had never taken the money.
She had never conspired with Jeremy.
The truth crashed into me, shattering everything I had believed.
I continued digging through the folder, my movements frantic now, desperate.
Papers slid across the desk as I searched for answers.
That’s when I found them.
Copies of the letter my mother had shown to everyone. The same letter I had kept in my wallet for almost four years. The letter that had poisoned my heart against the woman I loved.
Then, beneath it, I found the real one.
The actual letter.
The one I had seen photographed in my mother’s office.
My entire body shook as the full truth finally fell into place.
It was never Jiya who was at fault.
It was my mother.
My mother—the woman I trusted with my life… my heart… my soul.
She had betrayed me.
Not out of fear or desperation.
But out of hatred.
Hatred toward Jiya.
I knew my mother didn’t like her. Jiya had told me that years ago, when we were dating—when she was still Nyah. I remembered brushing it off, dismissing her concerns, telling her she was overthinking things.
But hatred to this extent…
This level of deception…
I had never imagined it.
Chills travelled across my body, raising goosebumps along my arms despite the heat burning inside me.
Then another memory struck.
A flashback of what I had said to Jiya.
The way I had flung the letter at her. The accusations. The anger in my voice. The words I had used before walking out of her house—after saying goodbye to the children—after slamming my wedding card into her hand like a final punishment.
The memory made me bend forward, my arms crossing over my stomach as nausea surged through me. I pressed my fist against my mouth, cheeks puffing as I fought the urge to be sick.
God… the things I had said to her… the way I had looked at her… the cruelty in my voice.
She had tried to explain herself.
Not once.
Not twice.
But over and over again.
And I hadn’t listened.
She had come all the way down to Vancouver to talk to me, to tell me the truth, to fight for us.
And I hadn’t given her the time of day.
I ignored her calls.
Ignored her messages.
Ignored her pain.
Now she had found Harper.
The thought stabbed straight through my chest.
I cringed; pain feathering through my jaw.
She was probably going to end up with him. And after everything I had done to her, why wouldn’t she?
While I… I would end up with Tatiana.
Living a life built on lies.
Regretting my actions every damn day.
My emotions collided inside me, each one clawing for control.
Pressure built in my chest until it felt like my ribs might crack under the weight of it.
Heat flooded my body, spreading through my veins like fire.
Pain shot through my palms as my fingernails dug deep into my skin, leaving sharp crescents behind.
Every instinct inside me screamed to hit something… to break something… to destroy something… to release the storm raging inside me.
But I forced myself to stay still.
Because this wasn’t over.
Not yet.
I needed to confirm everything I had just seen.
Every piece.
Every lie.
Every truth.
I needed to know the whole story.
Before I walked down that aisle toward a woman I didn’t love.
And before I faced the reality that the person responsible for destroying my life…
Was my own mother.