Chapter 5 - The Sister Who Had Been Used Too
Victoria followed me into the parking garage.
"Claire!"
I kept walking.
"Claire, wait."
I stopped beside my car.
Grant's sister looked nothing like him when she was frightened.
Grant became colder.
Victoria became younger.
Suddenly I could see the twenty-year-old woman I had first met at our engagement party, laughing too loudly because she was nervous around my father.
"I didn't steal that money," she said.
"Then prove it."
"I will."
"Good."
"You don't believe me."
"I don't know what I believe yet."
Her eyes filled with anger.
"I'm not Grant."
"No. But you are general counsel of a company that submitted my forged signature."
She flinched.
"I didn't know."
"You are also the owner of an LLC that moved millions into an account connected to your brother."
"I didn't know that either."
"Then you have a serious problem."
She looked over her shoulder.
The garage was nearly empty.
"Can we talk somewhere else?"
"Why?"
"Because I think Grant used me."
I studied her face.
"Get your own lawyer first."
Her mouth twisted.
"Maya told you to say that to everyone?"
"Experience did."
The next morning, Victoria arrived at Maya's office with a criminal defense attorney named Rachel Blum and three cardboard boxes.
She placed them on the conference table.
"Everything I have from Grant involving the Charleston entities, Northstar, and the Bennett proxy."
Rachel added, "My client is cooperating voluntarily. That is not an admission of wrongdoing."
Maya nodded.
"Understood."
Victoria looked at me.
"I opened the LLC four years ago because Grant said he needed a separate vehicle for confidential legal settlements."
"Did you ask why it had to be in your name?"
"He said conflict separation."
"And you accepted that?"
"He was my brother. He was CEO. I was thirty-eight and had spent my entire career proving I hadn't been handed my job because of my last name. When he trusted me with something sensitive, I wanted to believe it meant I had earned his trust."
That answer hurt because I understood it.
Grant was good at turning people's deepest insecurity into a leash.
"Who had access to the account?" Owen asked.
"Grant and me."
"Who had the token?"
"Both of us."
"Did you ever approve the transfers to Lakeshore National?"
"No."
"Can you prove where you were when they were authorized?"
"Some of them. One was during a trial in Denver. Another happened while I was on a plane."
Owen wrote that down.
Then Victoria opened the first box.
"There's something else."
She removed an old red folder.
The paper looked faded.
"I found this in my father's home office after he died. Grant told me to destroy it."
I stared at her.
"Did you?"
"I destroyed the copy he knew about."
She pushed the folder toward me.
"I kept the original."
Maya put on her glasses.
Inside was an agreement dated twelve years earlier.
Bennett Capital Preservation Trust.
Mercer Development Group.
Daniel Bennett.
Arthur Mercer.
My father.
Grant's father.
I had seen the investment agreement before.
But not this document.
It was a side letter.
Maya read silently for nearly a minute.
Then she looked at me.
"Claire."
"What?"
She turned the paper.
Paragraph six was underlined.
In the event of material fraud, unauthorized encumbrance, or intentional misrepresentation by the acting Chief Executive Officer involving trust-backed assets, the Bennett shareholder shall have immediate right to terminate all delegated voting authority, without regard to the stated proxy expiration date.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
"Immediate?"
Maya nodded.
"If the fraud condition can be established, yes."
October eighteenth suddenly became less important.
Grant could lose my proxy now.
Today.
Victoria whispered, "That's why he wanted it destroyed."
I looked at her.
"When did he ask you?"
"Two weeks after Dad died."
"Ten years ago."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"He said it was obsolete. He said it conflicted with the main agreement."
Maya shook her head.
"It doesn't. It supplements it."
Victoria's face crumpled slightly.
"I know that now."
"Why did you keep it?"
She looked at me.
"Because my father wrote something on the back."
She turned the last page over.
In blue ink, in Arthur Mercer's unmistakable handwriting, were nine words.
If Grant ever forgets who helped build this, protect Claire.
My throat tightened.
Arthur had been dead ten years.
He had loved his son.
But apparently, he had known him too.
I pressed my fingertips against the edge of the paper.
"Did Grant know your father wrote this?"
"Yes."
"And he still asked you to destroy it."
Victoria nodded.
Maya looked at Rachel.
"We need to provide this to the independent investigation."
Rachel agreed.
Owen was already scanning it.
My phone rang.
Grant.
I declined.
He called again.
Then a text came.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MOM.
I looked at Victoria.
"Where's Eleanor?"
Victoria checked her phone.
Her face changed.
"She had a cardiology appointment this morning."
My stomach dropped.
"Is she okay?"
"I don't know."
Then Grant sent another message.
MOM COLLAPSED. NORTHWESTERN. COME NOW.
Everything else vanished.
Whatever Grant had done, Eleanor had been my mother-in-law for fourteen years.
She had held my hand after both miscarriages.
She had slept in a chair beside me after surgery while Grant took a business call.
I grabbed my coat.
At the hospital, Grant stood outside a private room with his hands in his pockets.
He looked wrecked.
For one dangerous second, my heart remembered how to love him.
Then Savannah stepped out of the room.
She stopped when she saw me.
So did I.
Grant closed his eyes.
"Why is she here?" I asked.
Savannah's face tightened.
"Grant called me."
"Of course he did."
Victoria arrived behind me and stared at her brother.
"Mom is in the hospital and you brought your mistress?"
"She's carrying my child."
"You're still married."
"Not the time, Victoria."
"You made it the time when you brought her into Mom's hospital room."
The door opened.
A nurse stepped out.
"Mrs. Mercer is stable. It appears to have been a stress-induced arrhythmia. The cardiologist is with her now."
We all exhaled.
Grant leaned against the wall.
Savannah touched his arm.
He did not pull away.
I saw Victoria see it too.
Something final happened in her face.
Her loyalty broke.
Two hours later, Eleanor asked to see me alone.
Grant protested.
The nurse ignored him.
I walked into the room.
Eleanor looked smaller beneath the white blankets.
She held out her hand.
I took it.
"I didn't know," she whispered.
"About Savannah?"
"Any of it."
Her eyes filled.
"He told me you were refusing to have children because you cared more about the foundation."
I closed my eyes.
Another lie.
How many versions of me had Grant created for other people?
Cold wife.
Emotional wife.
Ambitious wife.
Estranged wife.
A woman who did not want children.
A woman who had already agreed to divorce.
Anything except the truth.
"Eleanor, I tried."
"I know that now. Victoria told me."
She squeezed my hand.
"I'm sorry."
I sat beside her.
"You don't need to apologize for him."
"I'm his mother."
"That doesn't make his choices yours."
She looked toward the door.
"Arthur worried about him."
My heart tightened.
"Victoria found the side letter."
Eleanor's eyes closed.
"Then it still exists."
"You knew?"
"Arthur told me the night he signed it."
She looked at me again.
"Grant always believed love was loyalty. Arthur believed love was sometimes stopping someone before they became the worst version of themselves."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
"I failed at that."
"No."
"Claire, listen to me."
Her voice became firmer.
"Do not save him because you loved him."
I stared at her.
"What?"
"He will ask you. He will say employees will suffer. He will say the family name will be ruined. He will remind you of the boy you married."
Her fingers tightened around mine.
"Do not confuse the man he was with the man making these choices now."
I swallowed hard.
"Eleanor-"
"Promise me."
I looked at the woman who had been family to me for fourteen years.
Then I nodded.
"I promise."
When I stepped into the hallway, Grant was waiting.
Savannah was gone.
Victoria stood near the elevators with Rachel.
Grant approached me.
"What did she say?"
"Ask her."
He blocked my path.
"Claire, enough."
"Move."
"The board is considering making my suspension indefinite."
"Then you should talk to the board."
"Northstar is threatening to walk."
"Then talk to Northstar."
"The banks froze two discretionary credit lines."
"Talk to the banks."
His face twisted.
"Stop acting like you had nothing to do with this."
I looked at him.
"I told people what you did. That is not the same thing as doing it."
He lowered his voice.
"If you terminate the proxy early using that side letter, you'll trigger a control fight."
So he knew Victoria had given it to us.
"Maybe."
"Claire, I am asking you as my wife."
"You don't have a wife when you need one and a fiancee when you want one."
His face went still.
"What do you want?"
"Nothing from you."
"Everybody wants something."
"That may be your problem."
I stepped around him.
He caught my wrist.
Not hard.
But hard enough.
Victoria saw it.
"Grant. Let go of her."
He did.
I looked down at the red mark beginning to form around my skin.
Then back at him.
He looked horrified at himself.
"Claire, I-"
"Don't."
I walked away.
Behind me, Eleanor's hospital-room door opened.
Her voice carried into the hallway.
"Grant."
He turned.
His mother looked at him from the doorway.
"If you touch her like that again," she said, "you will lose more than a company."
The hallway went silent.
Grant's face collapsed.
May you like
And for the first time, I understood that his empire was not falling because I was attacking it.
It was falling because every person he had used was beginning to step away at the same time.
