Chapter 3 - The Truth In The Office Walls
The next morning, the news broke. By 8 a.m., every local news station in Austin was camped outside Allison’s West Lake Hills house, their cameras pointed at the front door, their anchors talking in hushed tones about the “twisted murder plot” of a local millionaire designer. By 9 a.m., it was national. Good Morning America ran the clip of Vanessa whispering “I won” — a neighbor had recorded it on her phone at the funeral, and it had gone viral on TikTok overnight, 12 million views and counting.
My Facebook blew up. Hundreds of friend requests, thousands of messages — half from strangers telling me they were praying for me, half from trolls Derek’s people had paid to say I was a liar, that I’d killed Allison myself to get her money, that Chloe would be better off with her father. I deleted the app after I saw a comment that said “Grandma’s probably gonna molest the kid. Lock her up.” I didn’t have the stomach for it.
Benjamin showed up at 10 a.m. with two bodyguards — big, quiet guys in black suits, ex-Army Rangers he’d hired after someone had slashed all four tires on my car in the middle of the night. “Derek’s dad is pulling out all the stops,” he said, handing me a stack of court papers. “He filed for emergency custody of Chloe this morning. Said you’re too old, too grief-stricken, too ‘unstable’ to raise a four-year-old. He’s also got a judge in his pocket — Judge Holloway. She’s married to Derek’s dad’s business partner. We need to get in front of a different judge by end of day, or we could lose Chloe before the week’s out.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “They can’t do that. She’s my granddaughter. Allison wanted her with me.”
“They can and they will,” he said. “Unless we get the evidence from the microSD card admitted first, and unless we can prove Derek is a flight risk and a danger to the child. The lab’s working on the card now — they said they’ll have something by 5. In the meantime, we need to go to the agency. Allison said she hid backup files on the server. If we can get those before Derek’s people do, we can blow this whole thing wide open.”
Brightside Creative was in a sleek two-story building in South Congress, the windows plastered with Allison’s designs — bright, bold, sunflower-heavy campaigns for local restaurants, tech startups, nonprofits. The front door was locked, but Benjamin had the key Allison had given him six months before, “just in case.” When we stepped inside, the air smelled like Allison’s favorite lavender candle and fresh coffee, and for a second I forgot she was gone — I half-expected to see her leaning against the reception desk, laughing, holding a stack of design mockups.
Instead, her executive assistant, Mia, was sitting at her desk, her eyes red, a stack of files in front of her. She stood up when she saw me, and burst into tears. “Mrs. Cole, I’m so sorry. I should have said something. I knew something was wrong. I saw the money leaving the accounts. I saw Vanessa coming in after hours, going through Allison’s desk. I was scared. Derek said if I told anyone, he’d make sure I never worked in Austin again.”
I walked over and hugged her. “It’s okay, honey. You’re here now. That’s what matters. Did Allison tell you about the backup files?”
Mia nodded, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “She came to me three days before she died. Said she needed to hide everything — the server logs, the text messages, the audio recordings. She put them in a hidden partition, password protected. Only she and I knew the password. It’s ChloeSunflower19, all one word.” She hesitated, then pulled a small stack of papers from her desk drawer, held together with a rubber band. “I also made copies. I hid them in my apartment. I was gonna give them to the cops, but then Detective Miller showed up and started asking questions, and I knew I couldn’t trust him. These are the text messages between Derek and Vanessa. From six months ago. Planning everything.”
I took the papers, my hands shaking. The first one, dated February 14 — Valentine’s Day, the day Derek had told Allison he had to go to Dallas for a “last minute client emergency”:
Derek: Tonight’s the night. She’s taking Chloe to her mom’s for dinner. We can move the money.
Vanessa: Good. I want that penthouse furnished by next month. And don’t forget the life insurance. 5 mil. Once she’s gone, we’re set for life.
Derek: Relax. It’s all planned. The stair railing’s already loose. Next time she’s up at 2 a.m. working, she’ll “slip.” No one will question it. She’s always so tired.
Vanessa: And the kid?
Derek: We’ll keep her. She’s cute. Good for the Instagram pics. Plus, she gets Allison’s trust fund when she turns 18. Free money.
I read it three times, then had to sit down. Good for the Instagram pics. That’s all Chloe was to them. A prop. A paycheck.
Mia led us to the server room in the back, punched in the password, and pulled up the hidden partition. There were hundreds of files — audio recordings, bank statements, security camera footage from the agency, even a video of Derek meeting with Detective Miller in a parking lot, handing him a thick manila envelope.
“That’s the night Allison died,” Mia said, pointing to the timestamp. “11:37 p.m. Two hours after the 911 call. He paid Miller off to call it an accident.”
Benjamin downloaded everything to three separate encrypted drives, tucking one into his pocket, one into his briefcase, and handing one to me. “We keep these separate. No one gets all three. If anything happens to one of us, the others still have the evidence.”
As we were leaving, my phone rang. It was the lab.
“Mr. Cole?” the tech said. “We got the microSD card. It’s… it’s worse than we thought. There’s a full audio recording of the night she died. From the baby monitor in Chloe’s room. It captured everything. Derek yelling, Allison screaming, Vanessa laughing. And… there’s a third voice. A man. We’re running voice recognition now, but we think it’s Derek’s dad. He was there. He helped them.”
I froze. Derek’s dad. The man who’d walked Allison down the aisle when her own father couldn’t make it. The man who’d brought Chloe a pony for her third birthday. The man who’d hugged me at the funeral and said “We’ll get through this together, Evelyn.”
He’d been in the house that night. He’d watched them kill her.
“Mrs. Cole?” Benjamin said, touching my arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I looked at him, at Mia, at the sunflower mural Allison had painted on the office wall, and I knew — the fight was just getting started. Derek, Vanessa, his dad, the dirty cop, the corrupt judge… they were all in it together. They thought money and power would make them untouchable.
May you like
But they didn’t know Allison. And they didn’t know me.
I slipped the encrypted drive into my bra, where no one would find it, and straightened my shoulders. “Let’s go,” I said. “We’ve got a custody hearing to win. And a lot of people to take down.”
