Chapter 4
They took Natalie away at two in the morning.
The hotel staff had long since cleared the wedding debris.
The flowers were wilting in their vases.
The cake sat half-eaten on its stand, the bride and groom topper lopsided and abandoned.
Jackson sat at the head table, turning his wedding band over and over in his fingers.
He hadn’t slept.
None of us had.
Arthur was on the phone with the district attorney’s office, going over the evidence.
Judith was in the corner, arguing with the hospital—she had insisted I get a full medical workup after the sedative.
I sat beside my son.
I didn’t speak.
There was nothing to say that wouldn’t sound like an I-told-you-so, and I would never do that to him.
He had punished himself enough.
Finally, he spoke.
“I met her at the lowest point of my life,” he said. “Dad had been gone fourteen months. I was drinking too much. I wasn’t showing up to work. I was just… existing. And then she walked into the gala. She looked like an angel. She listened to me talk about him for two hours. She didn’t check her phone once. She cried when I told her about the camping trips.”
He laughed bitterly.
“I found out later she’d done her research. She knew exactly who I was before she walked through the door. She knew how much money we had. She knew Dad was dead. She knew I was vulnerable. It was all a performance. Every single minute of it.”
He looked at me.
“Did you know?” he asked. “Right from the start?”
“I knew something was wrong,” I said. “Not the full extent. Not the shaving heads and the drugging and the fake dementia claims. But I knew she didn’t love you. Not the way you deserved.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did,” I said gently. “A hundred times. In a hundred different ways. But you couldn’t hear it. You were in love with the story she was telling you. And I couldn’t take that away from you, not when it was the only thing keeping you going.”
He nodded slowly.
“I should have seen it,” he said. “There were signs. So many signs. She hated anything that had to do with Dad. She’d make me put his pictures away when she came over. She said they were ‘depressing.’ She made me stop going to the cemetery on Sundays because it was ‘unhealthy.’ She isolated me from everyone who had ever loved me. And I let her. Because when I was with her, I didn’t have to feel the pain of losing Dad. She made it go away. Or at least, she made me forget it for a while.”
He stood.
He walked to the window.
The sun was starting to come up over the city.
Pink and orange streaked the sky.
It should have been the first morning of his new life.
Instead, it felt like the end of everything.
“I need to go to her apartment,” he said.
“Jackson—”
“No,” he said. “Not to see her. She’s in jail. But all my things are there. And… I need to know. I need to see what else she was hiding. I need to understand how I could have been so wrong about someone for so long.”
I stood.
“Then I’m going with you.”
“Mom, you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t,” I said. “But I’m your mother. And when your child is walking into a situation that’s going to hurt him, you don’t let him go alone. Not ever.”
Thirty minutes later, we pulled up to the luxury high-rise where Natalie had been living.
Jackson had paid the rent, of course.
Three years, in advance.
He had bought the furniture.
The art.
The silverware.
Everything.
We took the elevator to the fortieth floor.
Jackson’s hands were shaking as he put the key in the lock.
The apartment was exactly as she had left it.
Spotless.
Perfect.
Every cushion fluffed.
Every surface polished.
It looked like a catalog spread.
It looked like no one actually lived there.
Jackson walked through the rooms like a ghost.
He touched the edge of the sofa.
He ran his finger along the mantel where their engagement photo had sat.
The photo was gone.
She had taken it with her when she left for the wedding.
Or thrown it away.
“I’ll start in the bedroom,” he said. “You check the study?”
I nodded.
The study was down the hall.
A massive mahogany desk dominated the room.
Bookshelves lined the walls.
I sat in the leather chair behind the desk.
The drawers were locked.
Of course they were.
I called Arthur.
He said he’d have a locksmith there in twenty minutes.
While I waited, I looked at the books.
Most were the kind of decorative books people buy by the yard, never opened.
But one shelf was different.
Books on psychology.
On manipulation.
On sociopathy.
On how to influence people and make them do what you want.
My stomach turned.
She had studied us.
She had studied Jackson.
She had treated him like a science experiment.
The locksmith arrived.
He popped the desk drawers open in under a minute.
The top drawer contained the usual—pens, paper clips, a stapler.
The second drawer was different.
It was filled with files.
Manila folders, carefully labeled.
I pulled the first one out.
**WESTBROOK, FRANK – DECEASED**
Inside was everything.
His obituary.
His death certificate.
His entire medical history.
The details of his cancer.
The timeline of his decline.
How he had suffered.
How long he had lasted.
She had researched his death the way someone researches a stock market investment.
The next file.
**WESTBROOK, ELEANOR – TARGET**
My blood ran cold.
Inside was my entire life.
My birth certificate.
My social security number.
My bank account numbers.
My medications.
My allergies.
My daily routine.
What time I woke up.
What time I went to bed.
What I ate for breakfast.
How long I took my morning walk.
Detailed notes, in her handwriting, going back three years.
*“Eleanor is overly trusting of people who show vulnerability. Cried for twenty minutes when I told her about my ‘dead mother.’ Will repeat stories about Frank if prompted—excellent distraction technique.”*
*“Hates conflict. Will give in on small things to keep the peace. Can be pushed incrementally on larger issues if done slowly.”*
*“Deeply afraid of being abandoned by Jackson. This is the primary pressure point.”*
*“Reacts strongly to guilt. Blames herself for Frank’s death (unreasonable but exploitable).”*
I closed the file.
I thought I was going to be sick.
The next file was labeled simply: JACKSON.
I didn’t want to open it.
But I had to.
Page after page of notes.
Detailed observations of my son’s weaknesses.
*“Grief is the master key. Mention Frank, and he folds immediately.”*
*“Terrified of being alone. Will tolerate almost anything to avoid abandonment.”*
*“Deeply insecure about running the company without his father. Tell him he’s brilliant and he’ll do whatever you want.”*
*“Sexually responsive to praise. Tell him he’s the best and he’ll buy you a car the next day.”*
I slammed the file shut.
“Mom?”
Jackson was in the doorway.
He was holding something in his hand.
A small, black notebook.
His face was white.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I found it in her nightstand,” he said. “It’s… it’s the timeline. The whole plan. From the beginning.”
He sat down heavily in the chair across from me.
He opened the notebook.
“‘Phase One: Meet Jackson Westbrook at the Children’s Hospital Gala, October 14. Wear the blue dress. Cry when he talks about his father. Get his number before midnight.’”
He looked up at me.
“October 14,” he said. “That was the night we met. She didn’t just happen to be there. She planned it. She bought the ticket. She researched me. She knew exactly what she was doing before she ever walked through the door.”
He kept reading.
“‘Phase Two: Isolate him from support system. Discredit mother slowly over six months. Plant seeds of doubt about her mental state. Convince him she’s becoming a burden.’”
He flipped pages.
“‘Phase Three: Secure engagement. Time it for the anniversary of Frank’s death—Jackson will be emotionally vulnerable and looking for something permanent. Insist on a prenup that gives me fifty percent in case of divorce, but make him think it was his idea.’”
Another page.
“‘Phase Four: The wedding. Get Eleanor alone the night before. Drug her tea. Shave her head. Leave the note. Destroy the dress. She’ll be too humiliated to show. If she does show, the dementia story is already prepared. Transfer goes through at 9:00 AM tomorrow. Honeymoon in Bora Bora. File for divorce after six months. Walk away with sixty million minimum.’”
He closed the notebook.
He threw it across the room.
It hit the wall and fell open.
A photograph fluttered out.
I picked it up.
It was Natalie.
With a man.
A wedding photo.
She was in a white dress.
He was in a tuxedo.
They were cutting a cake.
On the back, in her handwriting: “Richard and Natalie Voss, June 12, 2018. Divorced March 2020. Settlement: $2.3 million. Too small. Next time, aim higher.”
I looked at Jackson.
“She was married before,” I said.
He nodded slowly.
“She told me she’d never been engaged,” he said. “She told me I was the first man she’d ever really loved.”
He stood.
He walked to the window.
His hands were clenched into fists at his sides.
“Two point three million,” he said. “That was the practice run. I was the real target. I was the big score. And I walked right into it. With my eyes wide open.”
He turned to me.
And in his eyes, I saw something I hadn’t seen since Frank died.
Rage.
Cold, burning, focused rage.
“She’s not getting away with this,” he said. “Not the drugging. Not the shaving. Not the fake dementia. Not the three years of lies. She wanted to play games with my family? With my father’s legacy? With my mother?”
He picked up the phone.
He called Arthur.
“Whatever it takes,” he said when his attorney answered. “Whatever resources. Whatever experts. We bury her. We make sure she never gets within a hundred miles of either of us ever again. And we find out everything. Every other man she did this to. Every other family she destroyed. She’s not going to prison for five years. She’s going away for the rest of her life.”
He hung up.
He looked at me.
And for the first time in three years, I saw my son again.
The boy Frank and I had raised.
The man who would one day run our company.
The man who would protect our family.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
We walked out of the apartment together.
Neither of us looked back.
But as the elevator doors closed, I knew.
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
Natalie was in jail, yes.
But she was smart.
She was resourceful.
May you like
And she had nothing left to lose.
The war was just beginning.
