Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO HELPED ME BUILD EVERYTHING
4
Grant Mercer had been standing beside me since Sterling Developments was worth less than the wedding flowers scattered across my terrace.
We met when I was twenty-four.
I was renovating abandoned retail units in Queens.
Grant was a project manager for a contractor that went bankrupt halfway through one of my jobs.
Instead of disappearing, he showed up the next morning with a legal pad and told me exactly how to finish the project eighteen percent under the revised budget.
I hired him a week later.
Fifteen years.
He had been at my wedding to Caroline.
He stood beside me at her funeral.
He was one of the first people to hold Leo after we brought him home.
Now Victoria was telling me he knew about a key hidden inside my son’s music box.
Grant looked from her to me.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Victoria laughed.
“You always were good at sounding offended.”
“Julian, she’s trying to save herself.”
“Did you know Caroline?”
Grant stared at me.
“She was your wife.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“Did she ask you about financial irregularities inside Sterling?”
Silence.
That was answer enough.
“When?”
“During her pregnancy.”
“What did she say?”
Grant looked around.
Wedding guests had been moved to the ballroom.
Only David, Teresa, Victoria, Grant, my mother, and two members of estate security remained upstairs.
Charles Bellamy had vanished.
So had Ethan Cross.
I wasn’t surprised.
Grant rubbed his forehead.
“She thought some contractor payments were unusual.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She asked me not to.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
“My wife apparently spent the last months of her life telling everyone except me things about my company.”
Grant’s face softened.
“She was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“She didn’t know.”
Victoria said, “Stop lying.”
Grant turned.
“You don’t get to speak.”
“Why? Because the wedding failed?”
“Because you’re a parasite.”
Victoria smiled bitterly.
“At least Julian knows what I am now.”
She pointed at him.
“He still thinks you’re family.”
The words hit.
Grant’s face darkened.
“You have no idea what I did for him.”
“I know exactly what you did.”
“Victoria.”
My voice stopped both of them.
I looked at Grant.
“What key was in the music box?”
“I never saw it.”
“But you knew it existed.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Caroline told me she had a backup location for the documents.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Then why Victoria?”
Grant looked at her.
“Because Victoria was helping her.”
That surprised me.
Victoria lowered her eyes.
Grant continued.
“Harrison introduced them.”
“Why?”
“Victoria had worked in compliance for Ashbourne before Ethan.”
I turned.
“You told me you worked in luxury brand consulting.”
Victoria said quietly, “I did. Later.”
“What did you do at Ashbourne?”
“Internal compliance.”
“For how long?”
“Three years.”
“And you knew Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
She didn’t answer.
I thought of the photograph.
Kissing outside a hotel.
“Right.”
Grant stepped closer.
“Julian, whatever you heard upstairs, she is not telling you the whole story.”
“Neither are you.”
“I know.”
“At least we agree.”
Leo began crying again.
Teresa swayed gently.
My mother took him.
I looked at my son.
Every minute we spent arguing was another minute the person who broke into the nursery had to disappear.
I turned to security.
“Check every exit camera.”
One guard nodded.
“Already doing it.”
“Did anyone leave?”
“Several vendors when the ceremony stopped.”
“Get names.”
I looked at David.
“Call whoever you need. I want Harrison Cole located.”
David nodded.
Then Victoria said:
“Harrison won’t answer.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s afraid.”
“Of whom?”
She looked at Grant.
Grant said nothing.
“Stop looking at him and answer me.”
“Ethan.”
I remembered the man in the gray suit.
“Ethan broke into the nursery?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said he’d go after the files.”
“I said he would go after them if the wedding failed.”
“Why?”
“Because the wedding was supposed to give us time.”
I stared at her.
“Us?”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“You’re going to hate this.”
“I already called off the wedding.”
“Not enough.”
“Try me.”
She took a breath.
“When I met Caroline, she already suspected Ashbourne wanted Sterling for reasons beyond its market value.”
“They wanted our properties.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Your land options.”
Grant looked away.
I noticed.
“What land options?”
He said, “Old industrial parcels.”
“Where?”
“Westchester. Hudson Valley. Jersey.”
“We own dozens.”
Victoria continued.
“One parcel matters.”
“Which?”
Grant said, “Ravenswood.”
I knew it immediately.
One hundred forty acres outside Tarrytown.
An abandoned pharmaceutical campus Sterling acquired cheaply seven years earlier.
We had spent years fighting environmental permitting problems.
The land was currently worth perhaps twenty million.
Not enough to explain any of this.
“Why Ravenswood?”
Grant looked at Victoria.
She answered.
“Because Caroline’s father owned part of the company that occupied it thirty years ago.”
I stared at her.
“Wynn Biochemical.”
“Yes.”
I had never connected Harold Wynn to the site.
The company name had changed three times before we purchased it.
“What is at Ravenswood?”
Victoria whispered, “Records.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
Grant laughed bitterly.
“There’s that answer again.”
Victoria snapped, “Because Caroline never found them.”
“What was she looking for?”
Victoria hesitated.
“Evidence her father had hidden money there.”
I frowned.
“Physically?”
“Not cash.”
“Then what?”
“Bearer certificates. Ownership documents. Original partnership instruments.”
David’s face changed.
“Those could establish title to offshore holdings.”
Victoria nodded.
“Caroline believed her father’s eighty-six-million-dollar trust was only the visible portion.”
I looked at Leo.
“How much more?”
“No one knows.”
“Estimate.”
Victoria looked at me.
“Potentially hundreds of millions.”
My stomach turned.
Now Leo wasn’t simply my son.
To someone like Ethan Cross, he was the living key to an enormous hidden estate.
“Why would Caroline keep this from me?”
Grant answered.
“Because she didn’t trust Sterling.”
I stared at him.
“Meaning?”
“Someone was accessing information through company systems.”
“And you knew?”
“I suspected.”
“Who?”
“I never proved it.”
“Grant.”
His expression tightened.
“Your CFO.”
“Mason Price?”
He nodded.
Mason had been with Sterling eleven years.
He handled every major financing structure.
I thought about the wedding guest list.
“Mason is downstairs.”
“No,” Grant said.
“What?”
“He left fifteen minutes ago.”
Security appeared at the doorway.
“Mr. Vance.”
“What?”
“We found the person who entered the nursery.”
My pulse jumped.
“Who?”
The guard held out a tablet.
Video.
A catering employee pushing a linen cart.
He entered the service elevator at 4:16.
At 4:19 the same cart emerged upstairs.
But the person pushing it was no longer a catering employee.
Gray suit.
Ethan Cross.
He entered Leo’s nursery.
Six minutes later he left carrying something small inside his jacket.
Victoria whispered:
“He has the key.”
I looked at the footage.
Ethan entered an SUV outside.
Another man sat behind the wheel.
The camera caught his profile.
Mason Price.
My CFO.
Grant swore.
I felt strangely calm.
The kind of calm that comes when betrayal becomes too large for ordinary emotion.
“My CFO and Victoria’s lover just robbed my son’s nursery during my wedding.”
Victoria flinched at the word lover.
“Former.”
“Not important.”
“It is.”
“Why?”
“Because Ethan isn’t doing this for Ashbourne.”
“Then who?”
She looked at the broken music box.
“For himself.”
David asked, “What does the key open?”
Victoria’s face tightened.
“I think Caroline rented a private archive box.”
“Where?”
“Harrison once mentioned an old depository in Manhattan.”
Grant said, “Marston Vault.”
Victoria looked at him.
“You know it?”
“Sterling stores original deeds there.”
My blood chilled.
Company deeds.
Caroline’s evidence.
My CFO.
Everything had been closer to me than I understood.
I called Mason.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Then my phone received a message.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
Ethan Cross standing beside a metal deposit box.
In his hand was a brass key.
Below it:
YOU SHOULD HAVE MARRIED HER.
A second message appeared.
NOW WE DO THIS THE EXPENSIVE WAY.
Then a third.
ASK TERESA WHAT CAROLINE GAVE HER THE NIGHT SHE DIED.
I slowly lifted my eyes.
Teresa stopped moving.
Everyone turned toward her.
May you like
She began to cry.
And I realized my son’s nanny had been keeping one more secret.
