Chapter 3 - The Night My Father DiedFor several seconds, neither Adrian nor I spoke.
The sentence on his phone seemed to fill the room.
Ask Mara what happened the night her father died.
Adrian finally looked at me.
“What happened?”
“My father died.”
“Mara.”
“You were there.”
“Not all night.”
“No.”
That was true.
Adrian had left Blackthorn House shortly after midnight because his board called an emergency meeting.
My father died at 4:17 in the morning.
I had been holding his hand.
Lucas Mercer had been in the room.
So had Dad’s private nurse.
No mystery.
No secret.
At least, that was what I had believed.
“What is Celeste implying?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did your father tell you something?”
“He told me a hundred things. Most of them were morphine conversations.”
“About the trust?”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
A memory I hadn’t considered important.
Dad waking shortly before three.
His fingers tightening weakly around mine.
His words slurred but determined.
Don’t let them take Hartwell.
“Wait.”
Adrian became motionless.
“What?”
“Dad said something.”
I sat on the bed.
“He woke up around three. He asked whether you were there.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you’d gone to the office.”
“And?”
“He told me to open the bottom drawer of his desk after the funeral.”
“Did you?”
I looked toward the hallway.
My father’s study was directly below us.
“I forgot.”
Adrian stared.
“You forgot?”
“My father died an hour later.”
His expression softened.
“Of course.”
“The next week was funeral arrangements. Lawyers. Reporters. Board members. Then the housekeeper packed his room because I couldn’t go inside.”
“Did anyone use the study?”
“Lucas.”
“When?”
“Several times.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
Lucas Mercer.
My father’s attorney.
My friend.
The man Adrian had believed I was secretly meeting.
I stood.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn Lucas into the villain because it’s convenient.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The billionaire face where you decide everybody is guilty until your lawyers prove it.”
For a fraction of a second, his mouth almost moved.
Not quite a smile.
The ghost of one.
It hurt more than anger.
We went downstairs.
My father’s private study had remained mostly untouched.
Unlike the library, where we had married and where Adrian had attempted to end our marriage, Dad’s study still smelled faintly of cedar and tobacco.
His reading glasses remained beside the lamp.
A legal pad contained half a grocery list.
The sight stopped me.
Adrian stood quietly behind me.
“You don’t have to do this tonight.”
“Yes, I do.”
I crossed to the desk.
The bottom drawer was locked.
Of course it was.
Dad had hidden the key inside an antique brass compass since I was a child.
I opened the compass.
The key was gone.
Adrian noticed.
“Who knew?”
“Me. Dad. Lucas.”
“Anyone else?”
“My mother.”
“Your mother died six years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And house staff?”
“No.”
Adrian crouched beside the drawer.
There were scratches near the lock.
Recent scratches.
“Someone forced this.”
My pulse quickened.
He took a small tool from his keychain.
I stared.
“Why does a billionaire carry lock picks?”
“It’s a screwdriver.”
“You look disappointed.”
“I have people for lock picking.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
He removed two screws from the back panel, reached inside, and released the mechanism.
The drawer opened.
Empty.
Almost.
A rectangular impression in the velvet lining showed where something had once rested.
Adrian photographed it.
“What size?”
I measured with my fingers.
“Maybe a ledger.”
“Or external drive.”
I suddenly remembered.
“Dad’s black book.”
“What?”
“He had a leather account book. Old-fashioned. He wrote private transactions by hand because he didn’t trust cloud storage.”
“Was it kept here?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian called someone.
Within minutes, his security chief, Marcus Reed, arrived.
Marcus was forty-eight, former Secret Service, and built like a man doors apologized to.
He greeted me warmly, then gave Adrian a much colder nod.
Apparently abandoning a pregnant wife had cost Adrian points with his own security team.
Good.
Marcus inspected the drawer.
“I can pull camera archives.”
“From four months ago?” I asked.
“This house stores twelve.”
Adrian looked surprised.
“You changed the system?”
“Mr. Hartwell did before he passed.”
Marcus left for the security room.
While we waited, Adrian stayed on the opposite side of the study.
It should have made me comfortable.
Instead, I found myself studying him.
“You really thought I married you for Hartwell Medical?”
“No.”
“That’s literally why you brought annulment papers.”
“I thought you married me because you loved me and later used the marriage to obtain leverage.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
His answer took too long.
“Because I was afraid you’d convince me.”
I stared at him.
He continued.
“I wanted to believe you so badly that I no longer trusted my own judgment.”
“That’s not romantic, Adrian.”
“I’m not trying to make it romantic.”
For once, he sounded exhausted rather than powerful.
“My father used everyone he claimed to love. When I saw documents showing that your trust would gain voting rights through our marriage, I heard his voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one telling me love makes men stupid.”
I looked away.
“Your father has been dead ten years.”
“I know.”
“But you still let him make decisions.”
He had no answer.
Marcus returned twenty minutes later carrying a tablet.
“We found something.”
He placed it on the desk.
Video showed the hallway outside Dad’s study.
Timestamp: four days after the funeral.
Lucas Mercer entered at 9:12 p.m.
Alone.
He left seventeen minutes later carrying nothing.
At 11:46, someone else arrived.
Lenora Vale.
My breath caught.
“Your mother was here?”
Adrian looked stunned.
“I didn’t know.”
Video showed our housekeeper letting Lenora inside.
Lenora carried a purse.
When she left twenty-eight minutes later, the purse was visibly fuller.
Adrian’s face turned stone cold.
“Get my mother.”
Marcus didn’t move.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“There’s more.”
He advanced the footage.
Two weeks later.
3:08 a.m.
A man entered using a service door.
His face was partly hidden by a baseball cap.
He knew exactly where cameras were positioned.
But when he turned near the stairs, the camera caught enough.
I recognized him.
So did Adrian.
Lucas Mercer.
My oldest friend.
He stayed forty-one minutes.
When he left, he carried a slim black briefcase.
I sat down.
“No.”
Adrian remained silent.
“He had keys,” I said. “He didn’t need the service door.”
“Unless he didn’t want anyone knowing.”
Marcus placed another printed report on the desk.
“We checked Mr. Mercer’s travel history. He flew to Switzerland the following morning.”
Adrian’s attention sharpened.
“Which bank?”
“We don’t know yet.”
I shook my head.
“This makes no sense.”
Then my phone rang.
Lucas.
All three of us stared at the screen.
I answered.
“Lucas?”
“Mara.”
His voice sounded breathless.
“Where are you?”
“Don’t say anything. Just listen.”
“Lucas, what is happening?”
“You’re with Adrian, aren’t you?”
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
Lucas cursed quietly.
“Then you’re both in danger.”
Adrian took the phone from my hand.
“From whom?”
Silence.
Then Lucas laughed bitterly.
“You still think your mother is the mastermind, Vale?”
Adrian’s expression changed.
“Where are you?”
“Trying to stay alive.”
“Who forged Mara’s signature?”
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?”
Lucas breathed hard.
Then he said something that made every person in the room freeze.
“Her father.”
My mouth went dry.
“That’s impossible.”
“Mara,” Lucas said, “your father changed the trust because he discovered someone had been stealing from Hartwell Medical for seven years.”
“Who?”
Another pause.
Then gunfire exploded through the phone.
I screamed.
The call dropped.
Adrian grabbed his coat.
Marcus was already moving.
“Trace it.”
“I am.”
I caught Adrian’s arm.
“Where are you going?”
“To find him.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Lucas is my friend.”
“You’re sixteen weeks pregnant.”
“And you are still not the dictator of my life.”
His jaw tightened.
For one second, we were the Adrian and Mara who used to argue over ridiculous things at two in the morning.
Then Marcus interrupted.
“Got him.”
He turned the tablet.
A location flashed on the map.
An abandoned Hartwell Medical warehouse in Red Hook.
Adrian looked at Marcus.
“How fast?”
“Twenty minutes.”
I grabbed my coat.
Adrian started to protest.
I stared him down.
He stopped.
“Fine. But you stay in the car.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“I forgot how impossible you are.”
“No. You forgot a lot of things.”
We reached the warehouse eighteen minutes later.
Police sirens approached from several blocks away.
Marcus’s team entered first.
Adrian kept me behind him as we moved through the loading bay.
“Lucas!” I shouted.
No answer.
Then Marcus called from an office.
We ran.
Lucas was sitting against the wall, blood covering one side of his shirt.
Alive.
Barely.
He looked at me.
“Mara.”
I dropped beside him.
“Who did this?”
His hand closed weakly around mine.
“They know about the ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“Your father’s.”
“Who has it?”
Lucas coughed.
Then his eyes found Adrian.
“Your mother stole it first.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“First?”
Lucas nodded.
“I stole it from her.”
“Where is it now?”
Lucas smiled faintly.
“Somewhere no Vale would ever think to look.”
His grip tightened around my fingers.
“Mara, listen carefully. Your father wasn’t protecting Hartwell from Adrian.”
My heart pounded.
“He was protecting Adrian from Hartwell.”
Before I could ask what that meant, Lucas lost consciousness.
And across the warehouse, Marcus suddenly shouted.
May you like
“Everybody down!”
The windows exploded.
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