"What?" The word scraped out of me, thin and useless.
"I should've told you years ago." Dad turned his face toward the window, where the sky was just beginning to pale. Morning didn't belong here, not now. "God, I should've, but you were just a kid, I thought I was keeping you safe."
"Safe from what?" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. A nurse passed the door and glanced in. I couldn't ring myself to care. "You told me Mom died in a car accident, a single-car crash, that's what you told everyone."
"I told you what the police report said." He dragged his hands down his face, pressing his palms hard against his eyes. "What they wanted people to believe, but I knew, I always knew."
My thoughts scattered, tripping over each other. Every conversation we'd ever had about my mother replayed at once, overlapping, looking for cracks. I'd never questioned it, never pushed, I'd accepted the version that hurt less. How did I miss this?
"Start from the beginning," I said. My voice didn't feel like mine. "Tell me everything."
He dropped his hands in the dim morning light, he looked worn down to the bone, smaller than I remembered.
"Your mother was brilliant," he said quietly. "Did I ever tell you that?"
I swallowed.
"She had her accounting degree, top of her class, when she got the job at Stone Industries, she started at the bottom, junior accountant, but she moved up fast, too fast to go unnoticed."
"Stone Industries," I murmured, looking down at the photograph again, the date, her smile, the sunlight caught in her hair. "The company in the picture."
"One of the biggest investment firms in the country," he said. "She worked there seven years, by 2009, she was a senior accountant, she had access to everything."
My chest felt heavy. "And that's when she found it."
He nodded. "Irregularities, millions moving through offshore accounts, shell companies, laundered money." His voice dropped so low I almost missed it. "She came to me because she didn't know who else she could trust, she was scared."
My stomach sank. "What was she going to do?"
"She was going to report it, she had proof, documents, names." His hands started shaking. "But before she could… there was the accident."
The word tasted wrong.
"Late night, empty highway," he continued. "They said she must've fallen asleep, no witnesses, case closed."
"But you don't believe that."
"I know it wasn't an accident."
He reached for the bedside table and pulled out a manila folder I hadn't noticed before. When he handed it to me, his hands were trembling.
"She gave me this three days before she died," he said. "Told me if anything happened to her, I had to keep it safe, keep you safe."
I opened the folder slowly. Photocopies, financial records, account numbers, transactions. My brain latched onto it immediately, organizing, absorbing, and then I saw the notes in the margins. Her handwriting, sparse, urgent.
Traced funds to Cayman accounts — $47M.
A.S. orchestrating everything.
If he finds out I know, I'm dead.
My throat closed.
"Who's A.S.?" I asked, even though my body already knew the answer.
Dad's face hardened into something I'd never seen before, not anger, something worse.
"Alexander Stone," he said. "The owner's son, twenty-two at the time."
The name meant nothing to me, but the certainty in my mother's handwriting did.
"He killed her," Dad said flatly. "I can't prove it, the police wouldn't reopen the case, but I know."
The room felt unreal, like I'd stepped into someone else's life.
"Why didn't you go to the police?" The question came out rougher than I meant it to. "If you had all this, why didn't you..."
"Because I had you." He grabbed my hand, gripping it tight. "You were nine, your mother was already gone. If I made noise, if I pushed the wrong people, what do you think would've happened to you?" That stopped me.
The anger didn't disappear, but it cracked.
"So, I kept quiet," he said. "We moved, I worked whatever jobs I could, I watched." His voice turned bitter. "I watched Alexander Stone build an empire with blood money."
I couldn't look at him, I stared at the papers in my lap, at my mother's handwriting. Fifteen years of silence, fifteen years of not knowing.
"What do you want me to do?" I whispered.
His grip tightened. "I want justice."
I let out a shaky laugh. "I'm a waitress, I tutor rich kids in algebra, I can barely afford rent."
"You're brilliant," he said firmly. "You always have been, and I've already opened a door."
Cold spread through me. "What did you do?"
"Stone Industries is hiring, special projects analyst." He pulled out a printed email. "Your interview is tomorrow, nine a.m."
I stared at it, my name, my résumé—altered, polished, lies woven carefully enough to pass.
"You forged my résumé."
"I made you competitive."
"This is insane," I said, standing abruptly. "You want me to walk into that place and what... destroy a billionaire?"
"I want you to try," he said softly. "Your mother died believing you'd have a better life."
He pulled a chain from around his neck and placed it in my hand.
"Open it."
Inside was a tiny photo of my mother holding me as a baby, her face was soft, protective, real. On the other side, a lock of dark baby hair.
"That's all I have left of her," he said. "And this."
My fist closed around it.
"I'm dying, Maya," he said. "When I'm gone, the truth goes with me, he wins, and your mother becomes nothing."
The room was silent.
"Go to the interview," he said. "Just go."
I wanted to say no, wanted to choose the small, safe life I'd built, but my eyes kept going back to my mother's handwriting.
If he finds out I know, I'm dead.
She'd known the risk.
"Okay," I said quietly. "I'll think about it."
Relief collapsed his face.
I stayed until morning fully arrived, when I left, the city looked the same, but nothing else did. My mother had been murdered, and the man who did it was still free. For the first time in my life, I understood what revenge felt like.