Colonel Voss's Advice
Chapter 10 - Colonel Voss's Advice
Evelyn's father, retired Colonel Marcus Voss, flew in from Arizona within days of the arrest, a man who had shaped his daughter's entire understanding of discipline, honor, and quiet, steady resilience across her entire life.
He found her in the small apartment's kitchen one evening, exhausted, going through yet another stack of documents from Marisol's office, and simply sat down across from her without a word for several minutes.
"I want to tell you something," he said finally. "About your mother. Before she passed."
Evelyn looked up, surprised. Her father rarely spoke about her mother, who had died when Evelyn was only twelve, a grief he'd carried privately and quietly across three decades.
"She made a mistake, early in our marriage," Marcus said. "A financial one, trusting the wrong person with a considerable sum of money we'd saved. I was furious for months. I made her feel small about it, longer than I should have."
"I didn't know that," Evelyn said quietly.
"I've never told you, because I've spent thirty years ashamed of how I handled it," Marcus said. "I want you to understand something, watching you go through this. What Ryan did isn't your mistake to carry the way I made your mother carry hers. You didn't choose this. You didn't participate in it. I need you to actually believe that, not just say it to other people while doubting it yourself."
Evelyn felt tears rising, the specific, rare vulnerability of watching her steady, disciplined father offer this kind of raw honesty.
"I keep replaying nine years," she admitted. "Looking for the moment I should have seen this coming."
"You won't find it," Marcus said. "Because I don't believe there was a single obvious moment. I believe he was patient, calculated, and very good at hiding exactly who he actually was, the same way people like that always are. That's not your failure to notice. That's his considerable skill at deception."
"How did you rebuild your marriage," Evelyn asked, "after what happened with the money."
"Slowly," Marcus said. "By actually listening to her, instead of continuing to punish her for a mistake that wasn't nearly as calculated or intentional as what your husband did. I wish I'd learned that lesson faster. I think, watching you now, I finally understand how to actually pass it along properly."
Evelyn reached for her father's hand, a gesture she rarely initiated, the specific, steady comfort of a parent who had waited decades to offer exactly the wisdom his own daughter needed most in this particular moment.
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"What do I do now," she asked. "About the fund. About Piper. About everything."
"You do exactly what you've always done," Marcus said. "You show up, you take responsibility for what's actually yours to carry, and you refuse to carry what isn't. That's the entire discipline, Evelyn. I taught you that a long time ago. I think you already know how to apply it here, even in the middle of something this painful."
