I Buried Him for Five Years, Then He Came Back with Another Woman Chapter 10

I Buried Him for Five Years, Then He Came Back with Another Woman Chapter 10

The sender was Maren.

Reid’s finger froze above the screen.

He opened the message.

It contained a single video.

The footage had been recorded in an old warehouse ten years earlier.

A younger Reid lay bleeding on the floor.

Maren crouched with her back to the camera.

She had only been twenty then, with narrow shoulders, yet she forced him onto her back.

Her voice strained in the recording.

“Stay awake, Reid.”

“If you die now, I rescued you for nothing.”

The image changed to a hospital invoice.

A surgical consent form.

An invitation sent to a specialist in Boston.

Records of payments for his sister’s tuition.

At the end, Maren appeared behind her office desk.

She wore a black shirt, and her expression was composed.

“Reid.”

“I don’t blame you for loving Tessa.”

“People prefer to believe the person who delivers the soup, not the person who paid for it.”

“But the moment you pressed a gun to my head, our ten years together ended.”

“Never call me family again.”

The video stopped.

Reid stood in the rain and suddenly bent forward.

He struck his own chest with one fist.

The pain there was vicious.

It hurt more than the two ribs broken years ago.

By dawn, Port Sterling had been transformed.

Every Caldwell Maritime route was suspended.

Hale docks revoked the fleet’s priority berthing privileges.

Coast Guard investigators, IRS agents, and state police entered Caldwell headquarters at the same time.

The people who had drunk champagne on the Moonwake the previous night were trapped in their offices.

Derek shouted as officers led him away.

“I only followed Mr. Caldwell’s orders!”

“I didn’t falsify those accounts!”

Mrs. Walker clutched a box of receipts, her face ghostly white.

A reporter asked,

“You told Maren that everyone must move on. What do you say now?”

She covered her face.

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Caldwell told us what to do.”

Mr. Whitcomb looked even worse.

Reporters filmed him slipping out through the back gate of the Caldwell house.

They followed him with questions.

“Did you know Adrian faked his death?”

“Did you help conceal the truth from Maren for five years?”

“Did you allow Tessa to take Ms. Hale’s family belongings?”

Mr. Whitcomb could barely hold his cane.

He sighed into the cameras.

“Private family matters should remain private.”

“I’m an old man. I only wanted the family to stay together.”

The livestream comments raced past.

[Wasn’t Maren part of the family?]

[She was family when they needed her money and an outsider when they threw her out.]

[He helped destroy her and still pretends to be the peacemaker.]

At the Caldwell house, reporters trapped Tessa upstairs.

She tried to pack her jewelry and flee, only to find the safe empty.

The heirloom sapphire was gone.

So was the silver compass.

The housekeeper told her,

“Mr. Caldwell had someone remove them last night.”

Tessa’s expression changed.

“Why would he take them?”

No one answered.

The police arrived half an hour later.

“Tessa, you have been formally accused of falsifying pregnancy records, staging the pool accident, and participating in Wesley’s unlawful confinement.”

Tessa shook her head violently.

“I didn’t do any of that!”

“I’m the victim. I lost my baby!”

An officer placed a hospital report in front of her.

“The hospital’s original records show no evidence that you were pregnant when you arrived.”

“The miscarriage report was generated after you bribed the attending physician to alter the electronic chart.”

Tessa’s lips turned white.

“That’s impossible…”

The officer played another video.

The picture was grainy.

But the camera faced the glass doors beside the pool.

Maren only held out her hand and asked for the silver compass.

When the housekeeper could not see her, Tessa took a deliberate step backward and dropped sideways into

the water.