Chapter 3 - DEREK LEARNED HIS MOTHER HAD LIED TO HIM TOO
Table of Contents 5
Richard Morgan’s death was reopened within forty-eight hours.
Derek remained in county jail because prosecutors added witness intimidation and drug-related assault allegations while the guardianship conspiracy was investigated.
Victoria hired three attorneys.
Good attorneys.
Expensive ones.
She refused every interview.
But dead people leave paperwork.
Richard had been fifty-nine when he died.
No serious illness.
Moderate insomnia.
Prescription for a low-dose sleeping medication.
The toxicology report showed several times the therapeutic level.
At the time, investigators accepted accidental overdose because Victoria told police Richard had been depressed after business losses.
His medical records told a different story.
No depression diagnosis.
No suicide concerns.
No escalating prescription.
Then financial investigators found something.
Two months before Richard died, he changed his life insurance policy.
Beneficiary:
Derek.
Not Victoria.
Amount:
Four million dollars.
Why?
Because Richard had apparently discovered Victoria was moving money out of their joint investment accounts.
He had contacted a divorce attorney.
Never filed.
Three weeks later, he died.
Derek received the insurance money.
He gave nearly half to Victoria because she told him his father “wanted her taken care of.”
My stomach turned.
Derek had spent years believing his mother was financially dependent on him.
In reality, she may have created the fortune he began his adult life with.
The prosecutor handling my case asked whether I would agree to a recorded jail call with Derek.
I refused at first.
Then they explained.
Derek had started asking questions about Victoria.
He seemed unaware of Richard’s circumstances.
They wanted to determine whether Victoria had acted independently or whether Derek participated.
I did not owe them emotional labor.
They made that clear.
Good.
I thought about it for one night.
Then agreed to one call.
Not for Derek.
For the truth.
The phone rang.
He answered.
“Lucy?”
Hearing his voice made my entire body tighten.
My therapist—yes, I had started seeing one already—had warned me that physical reactions could arrive before conscious thoughts.
I grounded myself.
Feet on floor.
Dad beside me but out of camera view.
Federal investigators monitoring.
“You wanted to talk.”
Derek breathed shakily.
“I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
“I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“No.”
“I was stressed.”
There it was.
Excuse arriving immediately after apology.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“Don’t explain the slap.”
Silence.
“Just answer questions.”
His voice changed slightly.
“You sound like your father.”
For once, that felt like a compliment.
“Did you know your mother was drugging me?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
My stomach clenched despite already knowing.
“How long?”
“Four months.”
“Why?”
“Mom said we needed documentation.”
“Documentation that I was mentally ill.”
“That you were unstable.”
I almost laughed.
“Same thing.”
“She said the trust company would never let us manage anything otherwise.”
There.
Us.
“You wanted my money.”
“I wanted our future.”
“No.”
My voice stayed calm.
“You wanted control of my trust.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
Honesty arrived only because there was nowhere left to hide.
“Did you know the medication could hurt me?”
“No.”
“Did you ever ask?”
Another silence.
“No.”
That answer mattered.
Maybe Derek had not planned to kill me.
He had still accepted drugging his wife without understanding the consequences because my autonomy mattered less than his goal.
“Did you know about your father?”
His breathing changed.
“What about him?”
“Richard’s death.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your mother may have drugged him too.”
“No.”
Immediate.
“Derek.”
“No.”
His voice cracked.
“My father was depressed.”
“He had no depression diagnosis.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know Victoria told police he overdosed accidentally.”
“That’s what happened.”
“Then why is she on a recording saying she handled your father?”
Silence.
I heard breathing.
Then:
“What recording?”
I told him.
Not everything.
Enough.
Derek started crying.
Real crying.
I had heard him cry twice in twelve years.
Once when Richard died.
Once after I miscarried our first pregnancy six years ago.
That memory hurt unexpectedly.
We had tried for children afterward.
Nothing.
Eventually stopped.
Derek’s voice trembled.
“Mom said Dad left her.”
“What?”
“Before he died.”
He explained that Victoria told him Richard planned to abandon them financially.
That he had become unstable.
That the insurance policy change was punishment.
She convinced Derek not to speak to his father for almost two months before his death.
Isolation.
Again.
Same strategy.
My anger shifted shape.
Not sympathy exactly.
Recognition.
Victoria had trained her son inside the same system he later used against me.
But Derek was thirty-seven.
Not a child.
Inherited manipulation might explain him.
It did not excuse him.
“Did your mother teach you to record me?”
“Yes.”
“Did she arrange Dr. Reeves?”
“Yes.”
“Nathan Cole?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you to hit me?”
“No.”
That came immediately.
“That was me.”
Good.
One responsibility claimed.
“Why?”
He was silent.
Then:
“You told me you were calling a lawyer.”
I remembered.
That morning.
I told Derek I wanted to discuss postnuptial protections because his repeated questions about my house and finances made me uncomfortable.
He laughed.
Then slapped me.
Not random.
A response to threatened independence.
“I thought you were leaving.”
“So you hit me.”
“Yes.”
“And then bragged.”
“I was trying to make it look like you provoked something.”
Monica was right.
“Whose idea?”
“Mine.”
Again.
Derek continued.
“I thought if everyone saw you drinking and arguing, later they’d remember the whole day as messy.”
“You drugged my wine.”
“Mom did.”
“Did you know?”
“Yes.”
There was no version of this where he became innocent.
Good.
Truth did not need simplification.
Then I asked:
“Did you ever love me?”
Investigators had not asked me to say that.
It slipped out.
Derek went silent.
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
Probably true.
That was the painful part.
“Then why do this?”
“I thought once the money was secure, everything would go back to normal.”
I almost laughed.
There was the architecture of his mind.
He believed temporary violations could build permanent comfort.
Drug me now.
Control me now.
Take the house now.
Then later we would be happy.
“You don’t get to destroy someone’s freedom on the way to giving them the future you decided they should want.”
He cried quietly.
“I know.”
“No.”
I looked into the camera.
“You know now.”
That distinction mattered.
The call ended after twenty-two minutes.
Derek began cooperating two days later.
Not fully from remorse.
His mother’s betrayal broke something in him.
He gave prosecutors access to emails, financial accounts, private messages, and storage units.
Victoria had orchestrated much of the guardianship scheme.
But Derek had actively participated.
He did not attempt to hide that once cooperation began.
He admitted falsifying incidents.
Drugging me.
Creating recordings.
Pressuring Nathan.
Preparing the LLC transfer.
His plea deal would still involve prison.
Good.
Accountability without fantasy.
Then evidence from Richard’s case arrived.
An old pharmacy employee remembered Victoria asking whether crushed zolpidem could be dissolved into tea.
A week before Richard died.
A neighbor remembered hearing Richard and Victoria arguing about money.
Most important, investigators recovered a deleted voicemail from Richard’s old cloud backup.
Sent to an attorney.
“If something happens to me, check my medication. Victoria has been giving me pills I don’t recognize.”
My blood went cold.
Richard had known.
Too late.
Victoria was arrested for his murder.
News cameras surrounded Dad’s house the next morning.
He hated it.
I hated it more.
Reporters shouted questions about the “birthday slap case” that had become a homicide investigation.
I stopped watching television.
Then something unexpected happened.
A woman named Sarah Morgan contacted me.
Derek’s older half-sister.
I knew she existed but had met her only once.
Victoria always said Sarah was unstable and estranged from the family.
Of course.
Another woman labeled unstable.
Sarah arrived with a box.
Letters from Richard.
Her father too.
Victoria had pushed Sarah away years before after Sarah questioned missing money from a college trust.
Richard secretly kept writing to her.
One letter mentioned me.
Lucy seems kind. I worry Derek has learned too much from his mother about what marriage means.
I cried when I read it.
A dead man I barely knew had seen the danger before I did.
Then another line:
Victoria believes love means keeping people where she can manage them. I’m afraid Derek thinks that is normal.
There.
The family inheritance.
Not money.
Control.
Sarah looked at me.
“I should’ve warned you.”
“No.”
I had learned this lesson already.
“You weren’t responsible for saving me from your family.”
Her eyes filled.
“Thank you.”
We did not become sisters.
Not instantly.
But we became witnesses to different parts of the same truth.
And when Victoria’s trial began, Sarah and I sat on opposite sides of the aisle from Derek.
Not united by hatred.
United by the fact that silence had protected the wrong person for far too long.
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