My Dad Chose His Mistress Over My Mom’s Funeral And That Night Changed Everything
“Your father, Richard. He tried to kill me.”
The air left my lungs.
“What?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“He isn’t the man you believe he is. For months he’s been pressuring me, demanding I sign over my shares, the art studio, everything in my name.”
“When I refused, he told me I’d vanish.”
The words struck like lightning.
“That’s impossible,”
I stammered.
“He’s your husband, my father.”
Her voice trembled.
“He’s a businessman, Grace. He sees people only as assets or obstacles. And I stopped being valuable to him.”
Then she told me about the night she died. She’d been feeling chest pain for days, the stress unbearable.
She collapsed while painting. Their housekeeper, terrified, called for an ambulance.
At the hospital my father arrived, not with worry, but with papers. He wanted her to sign them before she was too weak to hold a pen.
When she refused, he walked out without another word. But mom wasn’t alone.
A former student of hers, Martha, happened to work there as a nurse. Martha had noticed bruises on mom’s arm weeks earlier and had sensed something terribly wrong.
“She helped me,”
Mom murmured.
“Martha changed the hospital files, made it look like my heart stopped. The body everyone saw wasn’t mine. It was a mannequin.”
I pressed my hand to my lips.
“You staged your death.”
Tears streaked her face.
“It was the only way to stay alive, Grace.”
Outside thunder cracked so loudly the car shook.
“I thought you’d be safe once I disappeared,”
she whispered.
“But when I saw what he posted, ‘new beginnings,’ I knew he wouldn’t stop. He’ll take everything, even you.”
My pulse thundered louder than the storm.
“Then we stop him first.”
Her eyes widened.
“Grace, no. You don’t understand what he’s capable of.”
“I do,”
I said quietly.
“That’s why we have to bring him down.”
For a moment she studied me like she was seeing me anew, not as her child, but as her equal, ready to fight. Then she nodded slowly.
“All right. But we have to be careful. No mistakes.”
The storm began to ease, rain thinning to soft drips from the trees. That was when I realized my mother hadn’t died in that hospital.
She’d started over, and I was about to follow her. By sunrise the city felt sharper, colder, as if it knew what I now carried.
Sleep never came. Every time I closed my eyes I saw my father’s face at the hospital, calm, detached, as though mom’s death had been a business transaction.
Mom stayed hidden in a safe house outside Portland. Martha checked in every few hours.
