Chapter 8 - The Blackmail Tape—The Mother—The Dark Partnership

I stared at the photographs scattered across the cheap motel bedspread.

They were surveillance photos taken a year ago. They showed Eleanor handing a briefcase full of cash to a known hitman in a parking garage. The next photo was a coroner's report.

It was the murder of Eleanor’s late husband.

Eleanor hadn't just inherited control of the stolen union funds. She had assassinated her husband to get them. And my father had the proof.

But it was the final photo that stopped my heart.

It showed my mother—my sweet, struggling mother—sitting in a diner, shaking hands with the same hitman.

My mother wasn't a hostage.

The bathroom door inside the motel room suddenly clicked open.

My mother walked out, drying her hands on a towel. She looked completely unharmed. There was no blood on her clothes.

She stopped dead when she saw me standing there.

“Julianne?” my mother gasped.

“You faked the blood in the kitchen,” I whispered, the ultimate betrayal crushing the air from my lungs. “You’re in on this with him. With both of them.”

My mother’s shocked expression instantly melted into a cold, hardened glare. She dropped the towel and crossed her arms.

“We needed a fall guy, Jules,” my mother said, her voice devoid of any maternal love. “Thomas owed the mob. Eleanor owed the union. If we didn't pin this on you and Marcus, they would have killed us all.”

“I’m your daughter!” I screamed, tears finally spilling over my cheeks.

“You’re an adult,” my mother corrected coldly. “You can survive a few years in a white-collar federal prison. We couldn't survive Frank Moretti.”

She reached into her purse on the dresser and pulled out a small, silver revolver.

“Put the photos down, Julianne,” my mother ordered, pointing the gun directly at my chest. “Your father and Eleanor will be back as soon as they realize the fire alarm was a fake. You’re going to sit in that chair and wait for Detective Russo.”

I looked at the woman who had given birth to me. The illusion of my family was completely dead.

I didn't put the photos down.

I grabbed the heavy bedside lamp and hurled it directly at her face.

The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.

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