Chapter 3 - Unearthing the PastNaomi’s office smelled of stale black coffee, ozone from overheated computer towers, and old newsprint. Whiteboards covered every available inch of wall space, mapped out with red yarn connecting shell corporations, political campaign donations, and missing persons cold cases across the southeast.
When I walked through her door, still wearing my ruined wedding gown with the train pinned up in a makeshift knot, Naomi took one look at my face and immediately locked the deadbolts.
"You took off the veil," Naomi whispered, her eyes widening as she stared at me. "The whole city is blowing up online right now. #VeiledBride is trending globally. Your father's legal team is trying to scrub every livestream from the cathedral."
"Let them try," I said, slamming the stolen medical folder onto her desk. "Look at the dates, Naomi. Look at the doctor's signature."
Naomi flipped open the folder, her eyes darting across the fragile, yellowed pages. She pulled out a magnifying glass, cross-referencing the signature against a federal medical registry database on her dual monitors.
"Dr. Harrison Miller died of a heart attack on November 12th, 2003," Naomi muttered, her fingers flying across her mechanical keyboard. "Yet this pediatric exemption was filed and notarized on March 15th, 2004—four months after he was already buried in Westview Cemetery."
"That was the exact day my mother disappeared," I said, sinking into a worn leather armchair as the adrenaline finally began to drain from my veins, leaving a hollow, freezing ache in my chest. "I was five years old. I remember waking up to shouting downstairs. I remember seeing blood on the white foyer rug. And then my father told me my mother packed her bags and left us because she didn't love us anymore. He put the veil over my face that very afternoon, claiming my skin couldn't handle the sunlight. But it wasn't the sun he was hiding me from. It was the resemblance."
Naomi pulled up an old, digitized front-page clipping from the Atlanta Constitution dated March 16, 2004.
Headline: Prominent Socialite Clara Vance Missing After Late-Night Dispute; Police Suspect Voluntary Departure.
"Your father controlled the local police department back then," Naomi said, her voice dropping into a grave, quiet register. "He bought out the lead detective, sealed the case file within forty-eight hours, and painted your mother as a runaway wife to protect his political ambitions. But if she didn't run away..."
"Then her body is still somewhere on the estate," I finished for her. "Specifically beneath the old greenhouse foundation that my father paved over the week after she vanished."
Naomi stared at me for a long moment, the gravity of what I was suggesting hanging heavy in the room. "If we go digging up Arthur Vance’s property without a federal warrant, we’ll be arrested for trespassing before our shovels hit the dirt. And the local judges are all in his pocket."
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"Then we don't use local judges," I said, pulling a heavy silver flash drive from the lining of my corset. "Before I left the estate this morning, I downloaded the master digital archive from my father's home safe—financial wire transfers, secret offshore accounts paying off city officials, and an audio recording of my father arguing with a police captain on the night my mother died."
Naomi took the flash drive, a slow, predatory grin spreading across her face. "Well, Eleanor... looks like the veil finally came off just in time to watch your father's world burn."
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