Chapter 1 - The Man Who Saw Through Seventeen Imaginary Cats
“Poor Kevin.”
Two words.
That was all Lucas DeLuca needed to make my carefully constructed personality begin falling apart.
I slowly lowered my spoon.
Across the enormous dining room of Halston House, Ethan Romano was already speaking to another woman, probably explaining how grateful she should be that men like him existed to manage the world's complicated financial decisions.
Good riddance.
Unfortunately, the man sitting beside me was considerably harder to discourage.
Lucas DeLuca leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes fixed on my face.
“Seasonal melancholy,” he continued thoughtfully. “Must be difficult for a cat.”
“Devastating,” I whispered in my most delicate voice. “Especially during November.”
“Does Kevin have a therapist?”
I nearly choked on my chocolate mousse.
“Of course.”
“A specialist?”
“Very exclusive.”
“What does this specialist charge?”
“Three hundred dollars an hour.”
Lucas nodded gravely.
“Reasonable. Does he accept insurance?”
I stared at him.
And then I made my first serious mistake of the evening.
I laughed.
Not the nervous, high-pitched giggle I'd practiced in front of mirrors for three years.
A real laugh.
Sharp, surprised, and entirely mine.
Lucas noticed immediately.
His expression changed.
Not dramatically. He didn't grin or raise his eyebrows.
But something behind his eyes sharpened, as though he'd finally found the missing piece of a complicated puzzle.
“There she is,” he murmured.
My laughter died.
“Excuse me?”
“The woman who's been hiding behind those glasses all evening.”
I pushed the oversized frames higher on my nose.
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Of course you don't.”
He reached for his water.
His cuff shifted, revealing black ink winding around his wrist beneath an expensive watch. The tattoo disappeared beneath his tailored jacket, but it reminded me that Lucas DeLuca was not simply another wealthy businessman.
He was a man whose enemies sometimes vanished from Chicago without leaving forwarding addresses.
I had absolutely no intention of becoming interesting to him.
“Actually,” I said, gathering my purse, “I should check on Gerald.”
Lucas glanced at the little orange-cat photograph sticking out of my handbag.
“Gerald?”
“My emotional-support cat.”
“Isn't Gerald the one who bites men in loafers?”
“He has a complicated personality.”
“Apparently.”
I stood.
Lucas did not.
Instead, his gaze moved briefly toward my father's chair at the opposite end of the table.
Charles Mercer was speaking to a silver-haired man I didn't recognize. Between them lay a leather folder containing financial projections for a luxury hotel redevelopment.
I'd noticed the documents earlier.
More importantly, I'd noticed the numbers.
The presentation assumed an $18.4 million incentive payment would increase available development cash while simultaneously listing that same payment as a reduction in construction costs.
Unless someone had invented an exciting new branch of accounting, the project was counting the same money twice.
I'd whispered something about it while reaching for my dessert.
Apparently, Lucas had heard.
“Before you go,” he said, “tell me something.”
My fingers tightened around my purse.
“What?”
“Would you invest in the Halston redevelopment?”
The question landed like a glass breaking on marble.
I blinked.
“What redevelopment?”
“The one your father has been discussing for the past forty minutes.”
“Oh.” I widened my eyes. “I don't really understand investments.”
Lucas watched me.
“Really?”
“Numbers make me terribly anxious.”
“Even when someone counts eighteen million dollars twice?”
For one terrifying second, I forgot how to breathe.
He had heard.
Every word.
I forced a confused smile.
“I'm sorry?”
Lucas placed his glass on the table.
“Nothing, Miss Mercer.”
He paused.
“Enjoy your cats.”
I practically fled.
The private terrace outside the ballroom was nearly empty.
Cold October wind rolled off Lake Michigan, carrying the scent of rain and wet stone. Beyond the iron railing, Chicago's skyline glittered against a black sky.
I walked to the far corner, where nobody could hear me, and finally removed my ridiculous glasses.
Then I took out my phone.
One message waited from Nadia Price, my best friend and the chief operating officer of my consulting company.
NADIA: Did the seventh candidate survive the cat presentation?
I typed quickly.
ME: Barely. Ethan Romano thinks I own twelve cats, seventeen litter boxes, and a Persian named Chairman Meow.
NADIA: I am begging you to retire this character.
ME: Never. She's saved me from seven terrible marriages.
NADIA: Your father is going to run out of rich idiots eventually.
I smiled.
Then another message appeared.
NADIA: Also, the Halston figures you asked me to review? Something is seriously wrong. Call me.
My smile disappeared.
Three hours earlier, Nadia had obtained a publicly circulated investor summary for the hotel redevelopment my father was promoting.
It was supposed to be a straightforward financing package.
An $84 million rehabilitation of three historic Chicago properties, including a luxury hotel adjacent to the St. Aurelia Children's Rehabilitation Center.
The project looked attractive on paper.
Too attractive.
The financial projections assumed extraordinary occupancy growth, construction costs below current market estimates, and a generous development incentive whose source was suspiciously vague.
I'd asked Nadia to investigate because numbers that perfect usually meant someone had worked very hard to hide the ugly ones.
I was opening her message when a deep voice spoke behind me.
“You're making another mistake.”
I turned.
Lucas DeLuca stood in the terrace doorway.
Alone.
He had removed his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. A thin scar crossed the edge of his jaw, almost invisible in the dim light.
He looked less like a gala guest now.
More like the man people whispered about.
“What mistake?” I asked.
“Standing with your back to the door.”
I slipped my phone into my purse.
“Do you usually follow women onto terraces?”
“Only when they quietly dismantle eight-figure financial projections while pretending they can't count.”
My pulse accelerated.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
Lucas approached slowly.
He stopped a respectful distance away.
“Your glasses,” he said.
“What about them?”
“They're giving you a headache.”
I stiffened.
“How would you know?”
“Because you've adjusted them eleven times since dinner began. And every time you look at something across the room, you glance over the frames instead of through them.”
My mouth went dry.
He held out his hand.
“May I?”
I should have refused.
Instead, irritated by his confidence, I handed him the oversized glasses.
He lifted them toward the terrace light, examined the perfectly ordinary lenses, and smiled.
“No prescription.”
I snatched them back.
“They're fashionable.”
“They're criminal.”
I folded my arms.
“Are you finished?”
“Not remotely.”
His amusement disappeared.
“Grace, you're faking all of it.”
Hearing my real name in his voice was unexpectedly unsettling.
I lifted my chin.
“You've known me for less than an hour.”
“I know you were counting exits before dinner. I know you understood the financial presentation better than half the investors in that room. And I know you deliberately humiliated yourself to make Ethan Romano leave.”
“He left voluntarily.”
“Because you told him your cat needed marriage counseling.”
“Kevin is going through something.”
Lucas laughed softly.
Then he became serious again.
“Why?”
I looked toward the lake.
“Because I don't want to marry Ethan Romano.”
“Then say no.”
“You think I haven't?”
“Your father doesn't accept that answer?”
“My father accepts almost anything if it's phrased as an investment opportunity. Unfortunately, my happiness has never appeared on his balance sheet.”
Lucas said nothing.
For a moment, I regretted the bitterness in my voice.
Then I remembered the seven dinners, seven carefully selected wealthy men, and three years of pretending I possessed neither ambition nor common sense.
I looked back at him.
“Why do you care?”
His gaze moved toward the ballroom.
“Because your father's redevelopment involves my family's money.”
That caught my attention.
“How much?”
“Fourteen percent of the company that owns two of the properties.”
I searched my memory.
The DeLuca organization had acquired distressed hospitality assets several years earlier. Its ownership structure was deliberately complicated.
Fourteen percent was not a controlling interest.
But it was enough to make Lucas's presence at the gala suddenly logical.
“And you're worried about the projection?”
“I'm worried about several things.”
“Such as?”
“The supposedly refundable incentive. The unusually low construction contingency. The absence of a meaningful explanation for a related-party payment.”
My professional instincts overpowered my caution.
“Which related-party payment?”
Lucas's eyes narrowed slightly.
“The one buried in the development-fee schedule.”
I thought back to the presentation.
“North Quay Advisory?”
He nodded.
“Eighteen point four million dollars,” I said. “But it's also reflected as unrestricted project cash. The investor summary makes it look like a funding source rather than a restricted payment.”
“Exactly.”
“And if the construction schedule slips, the debt-service reserve disappears before the second winter.”
Lucas stared at me for several seconds.
Then he smiled.
Not like a man amused by a ridiculous dinner performance.
Like someone who had just discovered a weapon nobody else knew existed.
“What do you do for a living, Grace Mercer?”
I hesitated.
“My father believes I coordinate social events.”
“And in reality?”
I considered lying.
But something told me Lucas would recognize that immediately.
“I own a hospitality consulting company.”
“How large?”
“Eleven employees. Mostly hotel underwriting, asset management, and operational restructuring.”
“Profitable?”
“Last year we earned six hundred and forty thousand dollars.”
“Revenue?”
“Profit.”
His eyebrows rose.
It was the first time all evening I'd genuinely surprised him.
“Interesting.”
“Please don't tell my father.”
“Why not?”
“Because he'd either demand control of it or decide I should marry someone who could run it better.”
Lucas's expression darkened.
“That sounds familiar.”
Before I could ask what he meant, his phone vibrated.
He glanced at the screen.
The change in his face was immediate.
Cold.
Dangerous.
He read the message twice before looking toward the terrace doors.
“Come with me.”
I stepped backward.
“Absolutely not.”
“Your father is signing something.”
“My father signs things constantly.”
“Not like this.”
He turned the phone toward me.
A photograph filled the screen.
It showed the leather folder I'd noticed at dinner, opened to a page titled:
HARBOR TRUST — BENEFICIARY AUTHORIZATION AND COLLATERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
I felt the wind leave my lungs.
Harbor Trust.
My mother's trust.
The one established after Evelyn Mercer died twelve years earlier.
I'd been told it contained a modest inheritance, mostly restricted shares in my father's hospitality company.
A financial adviser handled the annual statements.
My father discouraged questions.
I had never seen those particular documents.
Lucas enlarged the photograph.
At the bottom of the page was a signature.
Grace Evelyn Mercer.
Mine.
Except I had never signed it.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered.
“One of my people photographed the draft when it was circulated for investor review.”
“That's impossible.”
“Which part?”
“My signature.”
Lucas watched me carefully.
“It's forged?”
“Yes.”
“You're certain?”
“I haven't signed anything involving Harbor Trust since college.”
His jaw tightened.
“Then your father has a problem.”
I stared at the photograph.
Below my forged signature was another line.
The independent trustee's approval.
Marjorie Bell.
A woman I'd known since childhood.
Her signature appeared on the page, too.
And beside it was a notary acknowledgment dated three days earlier.
I shook my head.
“Marjorie had hip surgery last week. She's recovering at Lakeshore Ridge. She couldn't have attended a signing.”
“Are you certain she couldn't have signed remotely?”
“The trust specifically requires witnessed original signatures for certain transactions. My mother insisted on it.”
Lucas studied me.
“Why?”
I swallowed.
“Because she didn't trust people who borrowed money against assets they didn't own.”
A strange expression crossed his face.
“Your mother sounds intelligent.”
“She was.”
“Then we need to find out exactly what she protected.”
Inside the ballroom, a burst of applause rose above the orchestra.
My father was probably announcing another charitable pledge.
I looked at the signature again.
The flourish on the last letter was wrong.
Whoever had copied my handwriting had used the elaborate signature I once practiced as a teenager.
I hadn't signed my name that way in a decade.
That detail made the forgery even more disturbing.
Someone had used an old specimen.
Someone who had access to my childhood documents.
My father.
“What does this authorization do?” I asked.
Lucas hesitated.
“That depends on the trust agreement.”
“What does the transaction claim it does?”
“It authorizes the use of your inherited interest as collateral for a financing package.”
“How much financing?”
“Thirty-one point six million dollars initially. More if certain conditions are triggered.”
I stared at him.
“Thirty-one million?”
“Six hundred thousand.”
A terrible possibility formed in my mind.
“That's why my father wants me married.”
Lucas didn't answer immediately.
I thought about Ethan Romano.
His family operated a private lending business.
His father had been standing beside mine when the financial presentation began.
The meeting suddenly stopped looking like an awkward dinner arranged by an overbearing parent.
It looked like a negotiation.
“He wanted me to marry a lender,” I whispered.
“He wanted the lender's family tied to yours,” Lucas corrected. “Marriage doesn't transfer your property rights, but it can make pressure look like cooperation.”
I felt sick.
Lucas lowered his phone.
“Grace, how old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“When do you turn thirty?”
“November fourteenth.”
His expression changed again.
“Eighteen days.”
“Why does that matter?”
He studied the trust authorization on his screen.
“Because according to the documents circulated with this deal, your inherited shares become yours outright when you turn thirty.”
The city seemed to tilt.
“My father never told me that.”
“Then there are two possibilities.”
“What?”
“He's been careless about explaining your inheritance.”
“And the other?”
Lucas looked directly at me.
“He's running out of time to steal control of it.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
The orchestra continued inside.
A waiter crossed the terrace carrying empty champagne glasses, glanced at Lucas, and immediately changed direction.
I barely noticed.
My father's entire campaign to marry me suddenly made sense.
For three years, he'd chosen wealthy men with financial influence.
For three years, he'd insisted that I needed someone mature enough to manage my future.
For three years, I'd thought he was merely controlling.
But perhaps he'd been searching for someone willing to help him control something specific.
My inheritance.
I took a breath.
“I want every document.”
Lucas's eyes settled on mine.
“That's not as simple as you think.”
“I'm not asking you to make it simple.”
“You need a lawyer. An independent one.”
“I have one.”
“Good. You also need to understand the people involved.”
“Meaning?”
“Your father borrowed money from a man named Victor Carbone.”
The name made my skin prickle.
Even I knew Victor Carbone.
He financed troubled businesses through layers of private companies. His respectable investment firms appeared in business magazines.
His less respectable associates appeared in federal investigations.
Lucas's expression hardened.
“Carbone doesn't forgive debts.”
“Then my father should never have borrowed from him.”
“Agreed.”
I looked through the terrace doors.
My father stood beneath a chandelier, smiling for a photograph beside Ethan Romano's father.
He looked pleased.
Victorious.
Like a man who had finally solved a difficult problem.
I had spent most of my adult life trying to earn that smile.
Suddenly, I hated it.
“I need to confront him,” I said.
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not until you know what he has done.”
“You don't get to order me around.”
Something flickered in Lucas's eyes.
Then he inclined his head.
“You're right.”
The easy admission surprised me.
He continued, “But if you confront him now, he'll know you've discovered the forged authorization. The people involved will have time to destroy evidence before your lawyer can stop them.”
That was an argument I understood.
I hated that he was right.
I opened my purse and retrieved my phone.
Nadia had sent another message.
NADIA: Grace, I found something worse than the projection.
NADIA: North Quay Advisory received a payment from the St. Aurelia redevelopment escrow last month.
NADIA: Eight point six million dollars.
NADIA: The supporting invoice says pediatric rehabilitation equipment.
I read it twice.
Eight point six million.
Pediatric rehabilitation equipment.
The St. Aurelia Children's Fund had raised money for children recovering from spinal injuries, neurological conditions, and severe accidents.
The same charity whose gala we were attending.
My father was its honorary chairman.
“What is it?” Lucas asked.
I handed him the phone.
He read the message.
For the first time since we'd met, I saw genuine anger cross his face.
“Children's money,” he said quietly.
I looked back into the ballroom.
My father was applauding as a young girl in a wheelchair accepted flowers from the charity director.
He leaned down to speak to her.
The cameras flashed.
I remembered being seventeen, standing beside my mother's coffin while my father promised he'd protect everything she left me.
And suddenly I wondered how many promises he'd broken.
Lucas returned my phone.
“Grace.”
I looked at him.
“If your friend is right, this isn't just financial misconduct. Someone has been diverting restricted charitable funds.”
“My father would never—”
I stopped.
Because I didn't know that anymore.
Lucas saw the realization on my face.
His voice softened.
“I'm not asking you to trust me.”
“Good.”
“I'm asking you to trust what you can prove.”
I slipped my glasses back onto my face.
The ridiculous frames suddenly felt like armor.
“Then we start with the documents.”
Lucas glanced toward the ballroom.
“Your father is coming.”
I turned.
Charles Mercer stood just inside the terrace doors.
His smile had disappeared.
His eyes moved from Lucas to me, then to my phone.
“Grace,” he said.
“Father.”
“I've been looking everywhere.”
“I was getting some air.”
His gaze sharpened.
“Mr. DeLuca. I didn't realize you two were acquainted.”
Lucas smiled without warmth.
“We were discussing cats.”
My father frowned.
“Cats?”
“Seventeen litter boxes,” Lucas replied. “An impressive logistical operation.”
Ordinarily, my father would have looked embarrassed.
Tonight, he looked frightened.
That frightened me more than anything.
He reached for my elbow.
“Grace, come inside. There's someone I need you to meet.”
“Another potential husband?”
“Don't be difficult.”
I stepped away from his hand.
“Who?”
He hesitated.
Then he said the name that made Lucas go perfectly still.
“Victor Carbone.”
My father forced a smile.
“He has a very interesting proposal for your future.”
May you like
And in that moment, I realized the seventh marriage meeting might never have been about Ethan Romano at all.
It might have been about delivering me to the man who owned my father's debt.
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