Then Simone said, “There’s something else.”
I looked back.
“I didn’t ask him to make that announcement on the flight.”
I froze.
“He told me you did.”
Her expression changed.
“What?”
“Darius said you were tired of being hidden.
That you wanted him to acknowledge you publicly.”
“I never asked for that.”
“Then why did he do it?”
“I don’t know.”
For the first time, fear appeared in her face.
“But there’s something about Darius I haven’t understood since the beginning.”
“What?”
“When I contacted him three months ago…”
She swallowed.
“He wasn’t as surprised as he should have been.”
Rachel took that sentence very seriously.
She began digging.
Not into the children.
Into Darius.
Phone records.
Emails.
Cloud backups.
Financial statements.
Old clinic records.
At first, we found nothing extraordinary.
Then Rachel discovered a payment.
Six weeks before our flight to Atlanta, Darius had transferred twelve thousand dollars from a private savings account to a retired attorney named Leonard Chase.
