Chapter 6 - WHAT OUR FATHERS BURIEDMy father did not deny it.
That hurt more than I expected.
He sat across from me in the library of the house where I had grown up, hands folded over the head of his cane.
The Northbridge documents lay between us.
Dad looked at the signature.
Then closed his eyes.
“I wondered when this would come back.”
“How long were you planning to keep it from me?”
“Forever, if possible.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the truthful one.”
I stood.
I had spent the previous twenty-four hours discovering my husband had betrayed me emotionally, financially, and perhaps criminally.
Now my father had joined the list of people keeping secrets.
“Who was Richard Cole?”
“Nathan’s father.”
“I know that.”
Dad flinched.
“What was he to Riverton?”
“A partner.”
“A forty-percent partner?”
“In the beginning.”
“Why have I never heard this?”
“Because Richard didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Why?”
Dad looked toward the dark windows.
“In 1994, Richard was under investigation for insider trading.”
I sat.
“He was never charged.”
“No. But the investigation destroyed his reputation. Banks wouldn’t touch anything associated with his name.”
“So he gave you money?”
“He invested through Northbridge.”
“Secretly.”
“Yes.”
“And received forty percent of Riverton.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to it?”
Dad rubbed his forehead.
“Richard had problems.”
“What kind?”
“Gambling.”
The answer surprised me.
“Serious problems.”
“How serious?”
“By 1998 he owed millions.”
Dad looked down.
“He came to me and asked me to buy out his interest.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does this note say his daughter gets what is hers?”
Dad’s expression changed.
“That note has nothing to do with Riverton.”
I frowned.
“Then what does it mean?”
“That’s complicated.”
“I have had enough of that word.”
He nodded.
Fair.
“Richard had two children.”
I knew that.
Nathan and a sister who had died young.
At least, that was what Nathan had always told me.
Dad continued.
“His daughter, Emily, was older than Nathan by five years.”
“She died.”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“She disappeared.”
“When?”
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
“Dad.”
“She was nineteen. Richard was controlling. Volatile. She left home and cut contact.”
“Where?”
“Nobody knew.”
“The note?”
“Richard became sick years later. Cancer. Near the end, he regretted what happened.”
Dad tapped the sentence.
“When he says ‘my daughter gets what is hers,’ he was talking about a trust he created for Emily.”
“Why do you have the note?”
“Because I was trustee.”
My head began to ache.
“How much?”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Approximately eleven million.”
I sat back.
“And Nathan knows?”
“I don’t know.”
“He had this file.”
Dad’s face tightened.
“Then perhaps he knows part of it.”
“Would Nathan inherit if Emily is legally dead?”
“Yes.”
There it was.
Another motive.
“Is she legally dead?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I never filed to have her declared dead.”
“Why?”
Dad smiled sadly.
“Because I promised Richard I would keep looking.”
For the first time all day, my anger softened.
“Did you?”
“For twenty-seven years.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
We sat quietly.
Then I asked the question that mattered most.
“Did Nathan know you controlled the trust?”
“Absolutely.”
Of course.
He didn’t just want Riverton.
There was another eleven million dollars tied up because his sister had never been declared dead.
“Could he remove you as trustee?”
“Only if I became incapacitated.”
The same word from Graham Vale’s email.
Medical incapacity.
Everything connected.
“What happens if you become incapacitated?”
“The successor trustee takes over.”
“Who?”
Dad looked at me.
“You.”
I closed my eyes.
Nathan hadn’t merely been trying to make himself proxy over Dad’s Riverton shares.
If Dad became legally incapacitated and Nathan could somehow remove me from the trust succession structure, he might gain control over both.
Riverton.
And Emily’s trust.
“Did Nathan ever ask you to declare Emily dead?”
“Many times.”
“How recently?”
“Two months ago.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
I stood and called Mara.
Within an hour, lawyers were reviewing both trusts.
By midnight, they discovered something worse.
A petition had already been drafted to declare Emily Cole legally dead.
Not filed.
Drafted.
Prepared by Graham Vale.
Beneficiary upon declaration:
Nathan Cole.
Eleven million dollars.
I should have felt victorious at finally understanding Nathan’s plan.
Instead, I felt sick.
This was the man who had eaten pancakes beside me Sunday morning.
The man whose shirts I had packed for business trips.
The man who had held my hand at the hospital when we lost our baby.
Had every tender moment been real?
Or had he been waiting for my family’s assets to become accessible?
At 1:14 a.m., I returned to our apartment.
Nathan was there.
He shouldn’t have been.
I stopped inside the door.
“How did you get in?”
“I live here.”
“I changed the access code.”
“You forgot the building has management.”
He sat in darkness.
A whiskey in his hand.
I didn’t move farther inside.
“You need to leave.”
“No.”
“Nathan.”
“We need to stop this.”
“There is no ‘we’ anymore.”
His face tightened.
“You think Madison suddenly became your friend?”
“No.”
“She’ll tell you anything to save herself.”
“I know.”
“You’re trusting a woman who slept with your husband.”
“No. I’m trusting documents.”
He finished the whiskey.
Then looked at me.
“You found Northbridge.”
“Yes.”
“So now you know.”
“I know your father invested in Riverton and sold his stake.”
Nathan smiled bitterly.
“That’s Charles’s version.”
“You have another?”
“My father built Riverton.”
“He invested in it.”
“He funded it.”
“And then sold his shares.”
“Because Charles forced him.”
“Proof?”
Nathan stood.
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Demand paperwork for everything human.”
“That tends to help when people lie.”
His face twisted.
“You think you deserve all of it.”
“All of what?”
“Riverton. The trust. The houses. The money.”
“The trust belongs to your sister.”
“My sister is dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She vanished twenty-seven years ago!”
“And your father asked Dad to find her.”
“My father was dying and drugged out of his mind.”
“You were fourteen. How would you know?”
“Because my mother told me.”
That was the first time he had mentioned Elaine Cole.
Nathan’s mother lived in Florida.
We rarely saw her.
She claimed she hated New York.
I suddenly wondered whether that was true.
“Does your mother know about the trust?”
Nathan’s expression went still.
There.
Another answer.
“She does.”
“Did she help you?”
“No.”
Ring.
Thumb.
Lie.
I reached for my phone.
Nathan moved fast.
He caught my wrist.
Not hard.
But hard enough.
We both froze.
His fingers around me.
My phone in my hand.
His face inches from mine.
“Let go.”
He did.
Immediately.
But something irreversible had happened.
Nathan had never physically restrained me before.
He looked at his own hand as if it belonged to somebody else.
“Victoria—”
“Get out.”
“I didn’t—”
“Get out.”
His voice softened.
“I love you.”
The words were almost unbearable.
“No.”
“I do.”
“You love access.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You loved being Charles Hale’s son-in-law.”
His eyes hardened.
“You think everything about you is special because of your father.”
“No.”
I opened the door.
“I think everything about you became dangerous because of mine.”
He walked past me.
At the threshold he stopped.
“You’re going to regret humiliating me.”
I met his eyes.
“I didn’t humiliate you, Nathan.”
I glanced at his wedding ring.
“You did all of this yourself.”
The door closed.
Three minutes later, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I nearly ignored it.
Then answered.
“Hello?”
A woman spoke.
“Is this Victoria Hale?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Anna Mercer.”
Something about her voice sounded frightened.
“I’m calling about Emily Cole.”
I sat down.
“What about her?”
May you like
The woman took a breath.
“I think you’ve been looking for me.”
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