Chapter 3

The next morning, Job Finch set a thick stack of files in front of me, his voice breaking.

"Ms. Harding, we've got it. We've got all of it."

"A few of those street thugs. One scare and they told me everything."

"Miss Layla really was killed by them."

Job turned and walked toward the door, and the bodyguards shoved several men forward and kicked them down in front of me.

"Ms. Harding, this is the attending doctor from back then. Let him tell you himself."

My hands shook as I gripped the files, my eyes bloodshot, staring at the gray-haired doctor in front of me.

Job's furious voice sounded in my ear.

"Back then, Miss Layla worked three jobs to put Phil Whitney through grad school, and only managed a plain undergrad degree for herself."

"After Phil graduated, he applied to our company, and the two of them rented a basement nearby and moved in together."

"Then, somehow, Miss Eliana took a liking to Mr. Whitney, and he threw Miss Layla over."

"A few days later, Miss Layla was set on by some thugs on the street, and then all kinds of rumors started, saying she'd sold her body to them for money."

"In the end, Phil beat Miss Layla, called her shameless, and made her miscarry on the spot."

Job's voice choked as he went on.

"When Miss Layla got to the hospital, she was still thinking of Phil. She said she'd slipped and fallen by accident. From start to finish she never once said he'd hit her. And he, he actually bribed a doctor to kill her."

The old doctor dropped to his knees in front of me, weeping and confessing.

"Chairwoman Harding, I wronged your daughter. I wronged Miss Layla."

"All these years I've had nightmares every night. My conscience has never let me rest. Today I can finally tell the truth. I was forced into it, I was."

Sobbing, he laid out every dark thing that had happened back then, and every word tore me apart.

Back then, Layla had only suffered a threatened miscarriage from the impact. The injury wasn't fatal. With prompt treatment, both mother and child could have been saved.

It was Phil who came to him, threatening him with a huge sum of cash and his career, and had him switch the medication in secret, quietly using a banned drug to speed up the bleeding.

He was too young then, newly married with a child, and he didn't dare cross the Harding family's future son-in-law.

"Miss Layla was so pitiful..."

The doctor wiped his tears, crying bitterly.

"She was in so much pain, and she still begged us to save the baby."

"She told me she was an orphan, that she'd been bullied without end at the children's home, and that all she wanted in this life was a child of her own, a family."

"She said she didn't blame her boyfriend, that she'd brought the trouble on herself, and that he was hurting too."

I couldn't hold back my rage any longer. I slammed my fist into the jade ornament and let the blood run in streams onto the desk.

It splashed across the stack of files.

The statements also recorded, plainly, the confessions of those street thugs.

It was Eliana who found them, telling them Layla was a cheap slut who'd sleep with anyone, that she'd seduced her boyfriend.

She gave them twenty thousand and told them to give her what she deserved, and had them take photographs of the abuse.

She ordered them without a shred of hesitation, saying if anything went wrong she'd take responsibility, that she was the heir to Harding Group.

My heart hurt worse, as if it were being ripped apart and crushed over and over.

My Layla, my poor, ill-fated daughter.

The daughter I'd searched for twenty whole years, only to pass her by.

She was only twenty-two.

She was diligent and hardworking, kind and loyal, and she never hurt a single soul.

She'd endured all that suffering alone, and just when the hard days looked ready to end, the man she'd loved for over ten years, the man she'd given her heart to for over ten years, pushed her into the abyss with his own hands and killed her outright.

And even after death, she had to carry that filthy name.

While the real killers, wrapped in refined, gentlemanly clothes, ran my Harding empire, lived side by side, sat on my fortune, and enjoyed endless glory.

"Phil Whitney... Eliana Harding..."

My voice was cold as poison-tempered ice.

"I will make you pay blood for blood, and win justice for my Layla."