Page 109 of Vows In Corruption

Tears start rolling down her face a lot more frequently as if she was transported back.

“For two years I kept eyes on Charlie, going as far at getting a job at her school to make sure that she was okay. But with every passing day, I could see that she wasn’t. I tried so hard to protect her and to save her but nothing was working. My sister deserved a lot more than the life she was living but neither her dad or grandma cared. They pushed me away, called me every name in the book, even threatened to kill me if I didn’t go ago away and leave them alone. So after spending so many days, watching the little girl that I didn’t really know but owned my heart become a ghost of who she was, and getting told no, I finally snapped.”

I don’t need to be touching Ella to know that her body just went cold.

“What did you do, Ella?”

A sob escapes her lips and when I reach over to pull her into my arms, she pushes me away.

My hands drop and I wait for her to speak.

“I went over one night, and asked her dad if we could talk. Surprisingly he let me in. Charlie was in her room, so we were able to talk freely in the living room. I remember there being beer cans and liquor bottles everything, and there was this smell that had me gaging. I asked him what it would take. What did I need to do for him to let Charlie come live with me. As soon as the question left my mouth, he got angry and charged at me. He started hitting me and yelling, saying how I can’t take his kid away from him. Turned out, he was also getting money from the state and if he lost custody of Charlie, he would lose that too.”

That’s why in the search for information on Ella, both mine and Dante’s, there wasn’t any legal documents tying her to her sister.

“I remember laying on the grimy carpet as he kicked me in the ribs, and how I kept telling myself that I needed to come up with something to make him stop. So I screamed the biggest number I could think of. I told him I would pay him that if he would give me Charlie. He could still keep custody, take my money, but I get Charlie. He accepted. So I paid him everything in I had in bank account, which wasn’t much, grabbed Charlie and left.”

She promised him money.

What kind of lowlife accepts money for child?

My mind goes back to when I hired Ella. I got a lot of information on her, including her bank accounts, but out of all the thing that I checked, I didn’t check her back activity. Maybe if I did, I would have found out about this sooner and taken care of the problem.

“How much did you promise him?” I say, Looking my wife in the eye hoping that she would be truthful with me.

“You’ll get mad.” She whispers, her eyes red from all the crying

That’s my answer right there, but I need to hear her say the words.

“Baby, I won’t. Just tell me how much you promised him.”

With a trembling lower lip, she tells me. “One million.”

When she first throw out the number in out negotiations, it seemed odd that she would request so little money. She could ask for any amount and she asked for only a million. I just chalked it up to her possibly thinking that with one million she would set for life. But I guess I was wrong. She was actually requesting the amount to pay off her sister’s father.

“The money you requested for this marriage…”

Ella finishes my thought. “Was to pay Josiah.”

“When did you do it? When did you pay him off?”

“The morning you got voted in as CEO.”

I knew something was off with her that day. I should have pressed harder. I should stayed there until she told me what was wrong, but we didn’t have the relationship back then that we do now. Back then she was simply my assistant that I married to fulfill a clause. Now, she is more than that. Now she drives the nightmares away.

Anger rolls through me and not because she used the money I gave her to pay off Charlie’s dad but because she thought she couldn’t come to me with this sooner.

“And now that you’ve paid off what you owed him, he wants more money?”

That’s the only logical reason I could think of for Ella to open up to me about this now. The fucker probably found out who she is married to and decided to cash in.

“He was the one that was calling me the night of the hockey game and has been for the past to weeks. Today, I finally caved and answered. Get him more money or he comes and takes Charlie.”

I’m going to hunt down this fucker and kill him myself.

“How much?”

Ella cowers a bit before she answers. “Another million.”

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