The Blind Box That Cost Me Everything Chapter 06

The Blind Box That Cost Me Everything Chapter 06

That same day.

Gavin locked his office from the inside.

His assistant stood outside the door, listening to glass shatter over and over.

The desk ornaments. The trophies on the shelf. The mugs. He destroyed it all.

When the noise finally stopped, he called Harlan Briggs, the estate manager.

“I gave you one job. Ten thousand a month into her emergency account. Did you do it?”

A long pause. “Mr. Ellison…”

“Did you transfer the money?”

Harlan’s voice shook. “No.”

Gavin’s hand tightened around the phone until his knuckles went white.

“Three years. Not once?”

“I… the way things were with Mrs. Ellison, and Miss Halstead was always around, so I just assumed…”

“You assumed what?”

“I thought she’d be out eventually, so why waste the money… Sir, I was trying to save you…”

Gavin slammed his phone into the floor. The screen cracked into a spiderweb but kept glowing.

He crouched on the floor and pressed his hand against his forehead.

Three years.

She’d survived on mystery box scraps and whatever savings she had left from before the wedding. For three

years.

He thought about that morning. Her pacing the living room with the baby in the dark.

He’d rolled over, pulled the door shut, and gone back to sleep.

He thought about her calling him ten, fifteen times, begging him to pay for the surgery.

He’d gone to Bianca instead.

He’d been so sure it was another trick.

He thought about her kneeling in front of the closet, packing her things, while he stood behind her and called

it a performance.

All she’d said was, “I’m not making a fuss.”

A knock at the door. His assistant stepped in, holding a journal.

“The housekeeper found this under the mattress, sir.”

Gavin opened it.

Her handwriting was small and cramped, squeezed tight to save paper.

[Formula’s almost gone. Maybe two days left. I’ll skip meals and mash whatever I have with water for her.]

[Drew $9.90 today. My savings are nearly gone. Bought two packs of the cheapest diapers. Still not enough. Using towels at night.]

[She cried all night. I couldn’t calm her down. I’m terrified she’ll wake him. He hates when she cries.]

[Gavin smiled at Bianca’s baby today. I remembered what he said once: that he’d spoil his daughter until she was the happiest princess alive.]

[He kept that promise. Just not for our daughter.]

Gavin held the journal. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

If she were really just a gold digger, how did she survive that life for three years?

The last page had one line. The ink was so faint it was barely there, like the pen had been dying.

[Baby, I’m sorry. Mommy tried everything.]

Gavin sat in his study. Documents covered the desk.

His assistant had pulled surveillance footage from the wedding planning company. Three years old.

The moment the mystery boxes appeared on stage at the engagement party, the camera caught Maren’s

face.

She went rigid. Turned to her parents. Her lips moved: “What is this?”

Her mother grabbed her wrist instantly, holding her there, smiling the whole time.

Gavin paused the video and zoomed in.

He studied her face on the screen for a long time.

No one could fake that kind of shock. She hadn’t known.

His assistant set a bank statement in front of him.

“The 1.88–million–dollar settlement hit the account and was transferred out the same day. Recipient: her

father.”

“The next morning, he split it in two. One payment covered the down payment on Bianca’s house. The other went straight into her mother’s investment account.”

“And Maren?”

“Not a single cent.”

Gavin leaned back.

For three years, he’d believed she was in on it. That her whole family had conspired to rip him off, and she’d

been the bait.

For three years, he’d punished her with mystery boxes.

She never saw a single cent of that money.

“Keep digging.”

“I want to know everything that happened that night.”