Chapter 6
The interrogation room was cold.
Mark sat at the metal table, his hands cuffed in front of him, staring at the one-way mirror. He had been there for seven hours. No lawyer. No phone call. Just two agents who came in every hour, slapped another document down in front of him, and left again without saying a word.
He had gone through every emotion.
Rage.
Denial.
Bargaining.
Fear.
Now he was just tired.
The door opened.
Special Agent Carter walked in. She was carrying a thick file folder. She sat down across from him, opened the folder, and spread out photographs.
Pictures of the brake fluid bottle.
Pictures of the bank transfers.
Pictures of him and Natalie — entering hotels, leaving restaurants, walking into the base together.
Pictures Claire didn’t even know existed.
"Mark," Agent Carter said. "We have Natalie in the next room. She’s been talking for three hours. She’s told us everything. The insurance policy. The plans to divorce Claire after Liam turned five. The way you siphoned money from Reynolds Group through fake suppliers. The Cayman accounts. All of it."
Mark said nothing.
"We also have your mother," she said.
Mark’s head snapped up.
"My mother? What does my mother have to do with any of this?"
Agent Carter pushed another photograph across the table.
It was a bank deposit slip.
Five hundred thousand dollars.
Dated two weeks after the insurance policy was signed.
Deposited into Eleanor Collins’s personal account.
From the same Cayman shell company that had received the rest of the embezzled money.
"Your mother knew, Mark," Agent Carter said softly. "She knew about the affair. She knew about the money. She knew about the insurance policy. And according to Natalie? She encouraged it."
Mark stared at the deposit slip.
"That’s a lie. Natalie is lying. My mother would never—"
"She told us about the brake fluid," Agent Carter said. "She told us you asked her where it was stored. She told us she helped you find it. She said she thought you were just going to ‘scare’ Claire a little. Make her think she was losing her mind so she’d be easier to control. She didn’t know you were actually going to cut the brake lines. She swears she didn’t know that part."
The room started to spin.
His mother.
Eleanor Collins.
The woman who had spent every day of Claire’s marriage telling her she wasn’t good enough. Telling Mark he should have married Natalie. Telling anyone who would listen that the Reynolds family thought they were better than everyone else.
She had known.
All along.
"She also told us about the floor wax," Agent Carter continued. "The industrial stuff you ordered online. The kind that gets slippery when it’s polished. She said she helped you apply it the night before Claire fell. She said you told her it was ‘the only way.’ That Claire would never give you a divorce willingly. That the Reynolds family would ruin you if you tried. That the insurance money was the only way out."
Mark stood up so fast his chair fell over.
"LIAR!" he screamed. "Natalie is lying! My mother would never— she would never hurt anyone! She’s not like that! You’re making this up! You and the Reynolds family, you’re all conspiring against me—"
"SIT DOWN!" Agent Carter’s voice cut through his rant like a blade.
Mark collapsed back into his chair.
"I didn’t try to kill her," he whispered. "I never meant for anyone to get hurt. The money… the money was just business. The affair was a mistake. But I would never… I’m her husband. I’m Liam’s father. I would never hurt them."
"Then why did you do it, Mark?" Agent Carter asked. "Why throw away your career? Your family? Your son? For money? For Natalie? For the approval of a mother who would sell her own daughter-in-law for a new kitchen and a trip to Paris?"
Mark didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t know.
Or maybe he did know, and he just didn’t want to admit it.
It had started small.
A contract here. A supplier there. A little extra cash siphoned off the top, because the Reynolds family had so much they would never miss it. Because his father’s company was failing and someone had to save it. Because he was tired of being "Claire Reynolds’s husband" instead of Colonel Mark Collins. Because every time he looked at his mother’s face, he saw disappointment — disappointment that he hadn’t married Natalie, disappointment that he hadn’t made more of himself, disappointment that he would always be second to the Reynolds name.
Then Natalie had come back into his life.
She had listened to him. She had told him he was special. She had told him he deserved better than a wife who cared more about her foundation boards and her charity galas than she did about him. She had made him feel like the hero of his own story again.
And then the money had gotten bigger.
And the lies had gotten bigger.
And one day, he had woken up and realized he was in too deep. That if Claire ever found out, she would take everything. The house. The money. Liam. His career. His name.
The insurance policy had seemed like a safety net.
Just in case.
He had never actually intended to use it.
Had he?
He thought about the brakes. He had gone out to the garage that night. He had had the brake fluid in his hand. He had stood there for twenty minutes, staring at the master cylinder. And then… he had put the bottle back. He hadn’t done it. He couldn’t. He loved Claire. He loved Liam. He would never—
Wait.
Had he put it back?
Or had he done it and just… forgotten?
His memory of that night was fuzzy. He had been drinking. He had been fighting with Claire earlier that day about money. She had found a suspicious charge on their credit card — a hotel in Charlotte. He had told her it was a work conference. She hadn’t believed him. She had said she was going to ask James to look into the company accounts.
He had been scared.
So scared.
Had he gone out to the garage that night?
Had he cut the brake lines?
Or had someone else done it?
Someone who knew where the brake fluid was kept.
Someone who had helped him apply the floor wax.
Someone who had five hundred thousand reasons to want Claire out of the way.
Someone who had spent twenty years hating the woman her son had married.
Mark looked up at Agent Carter.
"My mother," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Where is she now?"
Agent Carter’s face told him everything.
"She left the FBI building an hour ago," she said. "We let her go — for now. She’s cooperating. She says everything was your idea. That you manipulated her. That she was just a scared old woman who didn’t know what she was doing. She’s already given three statements. All of them end the same way: it was all Mark. Mark planned it. Mark did it. Mark forced her to help."
The door burst open.
One of the younger agents stood in the entrance, his face white.
"Agent Carter," he said. "You need to see this. Now. Eleanor Collins — she just posted a video. To Facebook. To Instagram. To YouTube. Everywhere. It’s already been shared two hundred thousand times."
Agent Carter pulled out her phone and pulled up the video.
Mark leaned forward.
It was his mother.
She was sitting in her living room, wearing a simple black dress, no jewelry, her hair pulled back. She looked like a grieving widow. She was crying.
"My name is Eleanor Collins," she said to the camera, her voice breaking. "And I am the mother of Colonel Mark Collins. For the last twenty-four hours, my family has been subjected to a campaign of terror and lies by the Reynolds family. They have destroyed my husband’s business. They have ruined my son’s career. And now they are trying to send him to prison for crimes he did not commit — all because my son made the mistake of falling out of love with their precious daughter and dared to want a divorce."
She wiped a tear from her eye.
"Claire Reynolds was never a good wife to my son. She was cold. She was distant. She cared more about her parties and her charities than she did about her own husband. When Mark told her he wanted a divorce, she snapped. She invented this entire story — the affair, the insurance policy, the accidents — to punish him. To ruin him. Because if she couldn’t have him, nobody could. And now she is using her family’s money and power to destroy an innocent man and an honorable soldier who has served his country for eighteen years."
She looked directly into the lens.
"I am begging you — the American people — don’t let them get away with this. Don’t let a rich family buy the justice system. Don’t let them send an innocent man to prison. Share this video. Tell your friends. Tell your families. The truth will come out. And when it does, the Reynolds family will finally get what they deserve."
The video ended.
The agent looked at Agent Carter.
"It’s trending number one on Twitter," he said. "People are furious. The Reynolds family is getting death threats. Claire’s name is all over it. People are calling her a gold digger, a liar, a bad mother. There are already protests planned outside Reynolds Group headquarters in New York tomorrow."
Agent Carter looked at Mark.
"Your mother just declared war," she said. "And she just made this a whole lot more complicated for everyone."
Mark stared at the phone.
His mother.
The woman who had always said she would do anything for her son.
May you like
She had just thrown him under the bus to save herself.
And she was winning.
