Chapter 6
We spent three days on that mountain.
The drone flew twelve hours a day. Rappel teams went down the cliff face, inch by inch, searching every ledge, every crevice, every pile of rock and snow. Elias hired the best recovery team in the country—men who’d pulled bodies from Everest, who’d recovered black boxes from crash sites no one else would touch.
On the third night, they found it.
The box was wedged in a crack five hundred feet down, half-buried in ice. It was dented. Scratched. The lock was broken. But it was intact.
The rappel team brought it up at midnight. We were all there—me, Elias, Cole, Marcus, two lawyers—waiting in the cabin’s living room, a fire going in the fireplace, coffee gone cold on the table.
The team leader laid the metal box on the kitchen counter.
Elias cut the remaining latch with a pair of bolt cutters.
The lid creaked open.
Inside, wrapped in waterproof plastic, was everything.
Daniel’s laptop. Three backup drives. A stack of printed text messages between him and Olivia, going back two years. Handwritten notes with dates and times and dollar amounts. The original insurance application, with Daniel’s handwriting in the margins. A hand-drawn map of the cliff, with an X marking the ledge where I’d landed.
And the worst thing of all.
A voice recorder.
Elias pressed play.
Daniel’s voice filled the room, clear as day.
August 14th. Clara’s three months pregnant. Doctor says it’s a boy. Insurance policy went through today. Fifty million each. Double indemnity. Olivia says we should do it before she starts showing too much, but I want to wait until the third trimester. Less chance she’ll fight back. More sympathy from the insurance company. Mount Rainier in November. Perfect. No witnesses. No cell service. Body won’t be found until spring, if ever. By then, we’ll be in the Bahamas. Fifty million dollars. Fifty million. Nothing can stop us now.
I turned away, my hand over my mouth.
He’d planned it all. Every detail. Every date. Every step. While I’d been rubbing my belly and picking out names and falling more in love with him every day, he’d been counting down the seconds until he could murder me.
Marcus picked up one of the backup drives. “This has everything. Bank records. Client lists. The full Ponzi scheme. The insurance fraud. The timeline. This isn’t just a murder case, Elias. This is enough to put him away for ten lifetimes.”
Elias ejected the voice recorder. Slid it into an evidence bag. Sealed it. Signed it.
“Daniel wanted a war,” he said quietly. “He’s got one.”
We flew back to Seattle that night.
The next six weeks were a blur of lawyers and depositions and strategy meetings. The prosecution built their case brick by brick. The voice recorder alone was a nuclear bomb. Combined with Olivia’s testimony, the texts, the bank records, Daniel’s open-court confession, and the evidence from the cabin—there was no way out.
Or so we thought.
Daniel didn’t go quietly.
He hired the best defense attorney money could buy—a woman named Victoria Hale who’d never lost a murder case. She was ruthless. Brilliant. And she had one play.
Reasonable doubt.
She attacked every piece of evidence. Said the voice recorder was doctored. Said the texts were planted. Said Olivia was a scorned lover who’d fabricated everything to get revenge. Said Daniel’s confession in court had been the ravings of a man who’d just seen a ghost, who’d been shocked and confused and not in his right mind.
And worst of all—she attacked me.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she said in her opening statement, pacing in front of the box, her voice smooth as silk. “Clara Voss is not the victim she claims to be. She is a woman who married a man she knew was in trouble. Who manipulated him. Who lied to him. And who, when she discovered he was having an affair, faked her own death and disappeared for three months with a man she claims is her long-lost father—a man with a documented history of violence, fraud, and ties to organized crime.”
She turned to me, pointing.
“Ask yourselves this: if Elias Voss is really Clara’s father, why did he wait twenty-six years to find her? Why did he reveal himself only after she ‘fell’ off that cliff? And where did the Voss fortune really come from? The same place Daniel Reed’s money came from? Lies. Theft. And murder.”
The judge overruled the objection. But the seed was planted.
Victoria Hale didn’t care if she won the case in the courtroom. She was winning it in the press. Every day, new stories leaked. *Voss Family Ties to the Underworld.* *Clara’s “Rescue” Staged, Sources Say.* Was the Mount Rainier “Murder” Actually an Elaborate Insurance Scam?
It worked.
Public opinion turned.
People started asking questions. If Elias was really my father, why had my mother hidden it? Why had there been no record of him? Why had he stayed away for so long?
The defense’s strategy was simple. If they couldn’t prove Daniel was innocent, they’d prove we were just as bad. That it was a battle between two criminal families. That the jury couldn’t trust anything we said.
And it was working.
The trial dragged on. Week after week. I testified for three days. Victoria Hale tore me apart. Brought up every mistake I’d ever made. Every time I’d lied to my mother. Every time I’d skipped class. Every dollar I’d ever spent. She painted me as a gold digger who’d married Daniel for his money, then faked her own death to steal his insurance payout with the help of my “crime boss” father.
I held it together. Barely.
But the worst day was when Elias took the stand.
Victoria Hale had done her homework. She knew everything. Every skeleton in the Voss closet. Every deal. Every death. Every enemy.
“Mr. Voss,” she said, leaning against the witness stand, smiling like a shark. “You have been investigated seventeen times by the FBI. You have been linked to three unsolved homicides. You have paid over forty million dollars in fines for securities fraud. And yet, you sit here today, swearing to tell the truth, asking this jury to believe that you are an honest man who only wanted to find his daughter.”
She paused.
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Voss, that your wife Elena left you because you were a violent, dangerous man who put her life in danger? Isn’t it true she changed her name and moved across the country to get away from you? And isn’t it true that you finally tracked Clara down not out of love, but because you needed a legitimate heir to launder your money through?”
The courtroom erupted. The judge banged his gavel. Objections were screamed. But Elias just sat there, calm as a lake.
When the room quieted, he looked Victoria Hale dead in the eye.
“It is true,” he said, “that my world was dangerous. It is true that Elena left to protect our daughter. And it is true that I have done things in my life I am not proud of. But every single thing I have done since the day I found out Clara existed—every dollar, every hour, every risk—has been for her. And for her son. You can paint me as a monster all you want, Ms. Hale. But the evidence doesn’t lie. Daniel Reed plotted to kill my daughter and my grandson for fifty million dollars. He recorded himself doing it. He confessed in open court. And no amount of mud you throw at me will ever wash that blood off his hands.”
The jury watched him.
I held my breath.
Victoria Hale smiled. She had one more card.
“One last question, Mr. Voss. You say you love your daughter. You say you’d do anything for her. Then why, on the night of October twelfth—three days before Clara ‘fell’ off that cliff—were you photographed meeting Daniel Reed at a restaurant in downtown Portland?”
The room went dead silent.
I froze.
Elias’s face didn’t change. But his hand tightened on the witness stand until his knuckles turned white.
“Isn’t it true,” Victoria Hale continued, her voice rising, “that you and Daniel had a deal? That you offered him ten million dollars to leave Clara and never come back? And that when he refused, you conspired to fake her death so you could get her away from him? That the fall was staged? That the whole thing was a Voss production from start to finish?”
She held up a large photo.
It was grainy. Taken from across the street. But there was no mistaking it.
Elias. Sitting at a table. Across from Daniel.
They were talking.
The courtroom exploded.
I looked at Elias.
He wouldn’t meet my eye.
It can’t be true.
He wouldn’t.
Would he?
The judge called for an early recess.
I ran from the courtroom before Elias could reach me. I took the elevator down. Walked out into the street. Kept walking until my legs gave out, ending up on a bench in a park, gasping for air, the world spinning.
It all made sense now.
The timing. The way Elias had appeared out of nowhere on that mountain. The way he’d known exactly where to find me. The helicopter. The money. The team.
Had it all been a lie?
Had he really found me a year earlier? Or had he made a deal with Daniel?
Had my own father thrown me off that cliff?
A shadow fell over me.
I looked up.
It wasn’t Elias.
It was Victoria Hale.
She sat down beside me, smoothing her expensive skirt.
“Rough day,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
I stared at her. “What do you want?”
“To help you.” She smiled. “You don’t have to lie for him, Clara. I know the truth. I know Elias made a deal with Daniel. I know the fall was staged. I know the voice recorder is a fake. And I can make all of this go away. For you. For Liam.”
She leaned in.
“All you have to do is tell the truth. Stand up in that courtroom tomorrow and say you don’t remember being pushed. Say you slipped. Say you were confused after the fall. Say Elias manipulated you into pressing charges. In exchange, we drop all charges against Daniel. He walks. You walk. Everyone gets to go home and forget this ever happened.”
I looked at her.
“And if I don’t?”
She shrugged. “Then Elias goes to prison for perjury. For conspiracy. For fraud. And you lose Liam. Because no judge in this state is going to give a child to a woman who conspired with a known criminal to frame her husband for murder.”
She stood, brushing off her coat.
“Think about it, Clara. You have until nine a.m. tomorrow. Do the right thing. For your son.”
She walked away.
I sat there for a long time.
The sun set. The lights came on. People walked past, going home to their families. Their normal lives. Lives where their husbands didn’t try to kill them. Where their fathers weren’t accused of conspiring with the enemy.
I pulled out my phone.
Pulled up the photo the court had released.
Elias and Daniel. In that restaurant.
I zoomed in.
Daniel was smiling. Laughing even.
Elias was leaning forward. Listening.
Then I saw it.
Something no one else had noticed.
Elias’s hand.
Under the table.
Clenched into a fist so tight his knuckles were white.
A man holding a conversation he didn’t want to be having.
Not a conspirator.
A father.
I stood. Wiped the tears from my face. Walked back to the courthouse.
Elias was waiting by the steps. Alone. He’d sent the security team away. He looked old. Tired. Beaten.
“Clara,” he said. “Let me explain—”
“Okay,” I said. “Explain.”
He took a deep breath.
“Daniel found out I was watching him. Three days before the mountain trip. He tracked me to my hotel. Called me. Said if I didn’t meet him, he’d hurt you. Said he knew I’d been looking into his finances. Said he’d make sure you suffered before he killed you.”
He paused.
“I met him at that restaurant. He told me he knew who I was. Knew how much money I had. Demanded twenty million dollars to leave you alone. To get a divorce. To disappear. I told him I’d give him ten. We argued. I left. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to scare you. I thought I had more time. I thought I could handle it. I thought—”
His voice broke.
“I thought I could protect you. And then he took you to the mountain. And I was too late. Almost too late.”
He looked at me, his eyes red.
“I swear on your mother’s grave, Clara. On Liam’s life. I never made a deal with him. I never would’ve let anything happen to you. The photo is real. But the story Hale is telling is a lie. You have to believe me.”
I looked at him.
Really looked at him.
I saw the man who’d rappelled down a cliff in a blizzard to save me. The man who’d held my hand through the C-section. The man who’d cried when I named Liam after his father. The man who’d spent every day for twenty-six years searching for the daughter his wife had hidden away.
I believed him.
“I believe you,” I said.
He closed his eyes. Let out a breath he’d been holding for months.
“Thank you.”
“But tomorrow,” I said, “we finish this. For good.”
The next morning, I walked into that courtroom with a plan.
Victoria Hale thought she had me cornered. Thought I’d fold. Thought I’d lie to save Elias and myself.
She was wrong.
Because I wasn’t that girl anymore.
I was a Voss.
And Vosses don’t fold.
May you like
We fight.
And when the fight is dirty, we fight dirtier.
