“They told me you were gone,” I said slowly, the words scraping my throat on the way out. “They said you never made it out of the house. They said—”

She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting tears.

“They paid men to grab me after school,” she said in a rush, like if she didn’t say it fast it would catch fire in her mouth. “They put me in a van. They kept me in a small house near the woods, near the old lake place Uncle Colby likes. I heard them talking. I heard your name. They said you worked too hard, that you would never hand over the company, that you would ‘drive it into the ground out of pride’ before you let anyone else lead.”

Her thin shoulders shook.

“They talked about me as if I were a number,” she whispered. “A detail to solve.”

I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to cover my ears. Instead, I knelt down, slow and careful, until we were almost at the same height.

“What about the fire?” I asked quietly. “The house?”

“They set it later,” she answered, her voice trembling. “They put something there, something that would burn the right way so it looked like… like someone had been there.”

She swallowed. My stomach twisted.

“I escaped because the men they hired got careless,” she said. “One of them left the back door unlocked when he went out to talk on the phone. I ran. I stayed in the woods. I watched the smoke. I heard the sirens.”

She lifted her eyes to mine, desperation and pain swimming in them.

“I watched them hold a service for me, Dad,” she choked. “Today, I watched you stand by a stone with my name on it.”

Her voice broke.

“I wanted to run to you, but they were there too. After you left, they drove out to the lake house. I followed, staying in the trees. I heard them talking on the deck. They were laughing.”

My chest burned.

“Laughing?” I repeated.

“They said the first part of the plan was done,” she said. “They said now they just had to ‘handle you.’”

The Bitter Taste

The words hung in the air between us.

“Handle me how?” I asked quietly, afraid of the answer.

Chloe’s hands twisted the edge of the blanket until her knuckles turned white.

“They said you were lost in your sadness,” she whispered. “That you were already fading. That all they had to do was keep you ‘just sick enough’ and people would accept anything they said about you. That if you got worse, everyone would believe it was because you couldn’t recover from losing me.”