Chapter 6 The Cost of Truth

Sloane

As soon as he says her name, a memory flashes in my mind. We were sitting on his couch one night, and he looked more stressed than I had ever seen him. He just told me Lily had been really preoccupied with work and that he’s worried if she’ll be okay. We never got to finish that conversation before he broke up and I never spoke to him again.

“What do you know about my sister?”, his voice was low, with a tension I hadn’t heard from him before.

“Lily? Cade, I don’t know anything. I haven't heard a word about her since you walked out on me. I always just thought she was still doing her charity work. Why are you asking me this now? Is she okay?”

“She didn't just go away, Sloane,” he said, his voice sounding like dry wood snapping. He gave a heavy sigh, rubbing his face from forehead down. “She’s...gone. She died a year ago.”

I felt a cold numbness spreading from my chest to my fingertips. “Dead? Cade, no... when? How?” My mind struggled to process it. I had just been thinking of her as alive, as a person who existed somewhere in the world. To find out she had been gone this whole time was a horrible shock. “I never knew. Was it an accident?”

He walked back to his desk but didn't sit. He leaned his weight on his palms.

“She was murdered, Sloane. And the people who did it are still out there.”

“Murdered? How did...”

“The police ruled it a suicide,” Cade interrupted. “They were wrong. Even though someone made it look like it was”

“Lily was brilliant,” he whispered, more to himself than to me. “She didn't care about the family business or the money. She wanted to change things. She was working with a refugee assistance organization, helping women who had nowhere else to go. But she noticed something strange.”

I leaned forward, drawn in by the weight of his words. “How strange?”

“Young women,” Cade said, looking up at me now. “They were arriving in the country legally, with all their paperwork in order. Then, within weeks, they would just...disappear. No records of them leaving, no police reports, nothing. Just gone.”

“But from what you’re saying, she was a social worker?”, I asked curiously.

“She was also into research in that field. And she began an investigation that she kept secret from almost everyone.”

“Including you?” I asked, my voice tight. “You were her brother, Cade. You were supposed to be the one she could tell anything to.”

“She did tell me about it, but just a few weeks before she died,” Cade said, his jaw tightening so hard I thought his teeth might break.

“She told you about it and you let her keep going?”

“I didn’t know how bad it was. I told her she was doing too much. I told her to go to the police and let them handle it. But she told me she couldn't yet.” 

“If you really believed she was in danger, you wouldn't have just told her to go to the police. You would have dragged her there yourself.“

I could see the guilt that crossed his face. Yet he continued, “She said she needed one more piece of evidence to prove it wasn't just a coincidence. She needed to link it to the people at the top.” He let out another sigh, “I should have stopped her.”

“They found her in her apartment,” he continued as he sat back down, his voice going flat and cold. “The door was locked from the inside. The police called it a tragedy brought on by depression, and closed the case in forty-eight hours. But Lily isn’t suicidal and she would never have given up on those women.”

Suddenly I was confused. "Why do you need me for this? You have the money. You have the resources. Why tie this to a marriage contract? Why make my presence a condition for justice?"

“Because I found a pattern,” he said.

Cade reached for his laptop and turned it around so I could see the screen. There were files, thousands of them. Photos of women, spreadsheets of dates, and redacted government documents. He had spent the last couple of months doing what the police wouldn't.

“These disappearances weren’t random”, he said, scrolling through a list of events. “They happened at high-end charity galas, luxury auctions, and private corporate retreats. Specifically, events held at Hartford properties.”

I felt like he just punched me in the stomach. “That's insane. My family... we run hotels, Cade. We provide hospitality. We don't...”

“Your family might be covering for murderers, Sloane,” Cade said, cutting through my defense. “A human trafficking ring has been operating for years, using Hartford Hotels as their primary cover. It's a perfect cover. It’s expensive and private. Lily must have found some proof before she died.”

I stood up so fast my chair nearly tipped over. “You think someone used my family business for some operation and then killed your sister? You think they’re covering for murderers and don’t know it?”

“I think someone got her killed to protect the operation,” Cade corrected me, standing up to meet my gaze. “And I think that someone has enough power and influence over your family to access their security and event schedule.”

"And the police?" I pressed, leaning over the desk. "If Lily was murdered, why not go to them now? Why sit on a crime for years instead of taking it to the authorities?"

He didn't answer immediately. "“They weren’t willing to look,” he said. “That’s all I know.”, he sighed, turning away with a look of pain and defeat, “And I know that too because I tried, and that’s what played out". He turned back to me. “They said they would try. And then I believed they would then, but now I know that was it just cheap talk. I didn't hear word from them again”

“Okay, so the police didn't look into the case again.", I said. But you're wrong,” I said, my voice trembling. “You have to be wrong.” I felt like I was going to scream. “My family, they’re business people, they would never let themselves get involved with criminals.”

He looked at me then but he didn't offer a single word of explanation. He was withholding something. I could feel the weight of the secret between us. I looked at the evidence on his laptop and the papers on his desk. 

"Why show me this now?" I challenged him, my voice was sharper than I intended. "If you had proof of a cover-up, why wait until I walked into your office to play the hero?"

"I'm not playing hero," he said, his voice dropping low a bit. "I needed the right moment. When I was sure I could find a way to convince you to help."

I couldn't stand the sight of him. I reached across the desk and snatched the police report and the surveillance photo, shoving them into my bag. "I’m taking these," I demanded, not waiting for his permission.

“Sloane”

“No,” I snapped, lifting a hand. “You’ve said enough. I don’t need your version of the truth. I need the facts, and I’ll find them without you hovering over my shoulder.”

I turned toward the door, my pulse hammering.

“Don’t call me. Don’t send your secretary. And don’t interfere.”

I paused with my hand on the handle and looked back at him.

“Because if I discover you’re wrong, if even one word of this is a lie, that you’ve been using my family to build a case just because you can’t finish, there won’t be a marriage” 

My voice didn’t shake. 

“And whatever access you think you can get through me ends before it even begins”