Chapter 9 - The Truth Unspoken
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Samuel leaned heavily against the footboard of the bed, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I should have ignored the email. I should have kept checking on you,” he said, the guilt radiating from him in waves.
“No,” I cried, the tears spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. “I explicitly told you not to come.”
“You were my daughter,” he argued fiercely.
“I was a grown adult.”
“You were both.”
There it was. The complicated, messy truth. There was no easy, simple answer that absolved either of us of the terrible distance that had grown between us.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and asked the question I dreaded most.
“Did you know?” I asked, staring into his dark eyes.
His expression shifted slightly, calculating his response. “About Victor physically hitting you?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Samuel said immediately, without a second of hesitation. “I strongly suspected control. I saw the isolation. I saw him taking over the money. But I absolutely did not know he was violently beating you.”
“What about his family?”
“I knew his mother despised me,” he admitted dryly.
That almost made me laugh again. Helena had angrily called Samuel “a government thug” after he politely asked Victor why he needed sudden access to a highly protected investment account my late grandmother had left exclusively to me. He had asked the question once. Calmly. Professionally. Victor had fumed and ranted about that single question for three entire years.
Samuel continued, his voice steady. “I knew Victor absolutely did not like answering direct questions. But that is not the same as knowing this was happening to you.”
I nodded slowly, accepting his truth.
Then, a fresh wave of panic washed over me, cold and paralyzing.
“Nora recorded the entire attack,” I blurted out, my heart rate spiking on the monitor. “I saw her. She’ll delete it, Dad. She’ll protect him.”
“I saw her phone,” Samuel said calmly.
“You have to stop her from deleting it!”
Samuel slowly shook his head. “No, I don't.”
I stared at him, utterly bewildered and terrified. “Dad, what are you talking about?”
“The responding police officers know the recording exists, Emily. They saw it. They will handle its preservation through lawful process and search warrants.”
“But what if she destroys it before they get a warrant?” I cried, panic making my voice shrill.
“Then that deliberate destruction becomes another powerful fact in the prosecution's case against them,” he stated calmly.
I started crying harder, overwhelmed by the fear that the only hard evidence of my suffering would vanish. He stepped closer, finally reaching out to gently touch my uninjured arm.
“Emily, listen to me,” Samuel said firmly. “We absolutely do not need one perfect, dramatic video for what happened in that kitchen to become legally real. The officers saw the blood in the room. They secured the cane. They documented your severe injuries. They took witness statements. Whatever Nora decides to do with that phone matters, but it is not the only thing holding the truth together.”
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I had been living in Victor’s twisted, gaslit world for far too long. In his terrifying reality, truth only existed if he completely failed to erase every single witness or shred of evidence.
My father, the seasoned investigator, was patiently telling me that the truth was much stronger than Victor, and it could survive perfectly well outside of his control.
