Chapter 3 - BLOOD BEFORE BUSINESS
My brother had never been afraid of anything sensible.
He jumped out of airplanes.
Raced motorcycles.
Bought a bar in Lisbon because he liked the bartender.
Once, at twenty-six, he broke his collarbone trying to ski from the roof of a chalet into a swimming pool.
So hearing fear in Andrew Whitmore’s voice frightened me more than screaming would have.
My father and I reached his townhouse in twelve minutes.
Police beat us there by three.
The front door was open.
A lamp lay shattered in the hallway.
One window had been broken from the inside.
There was blood on the kitchen floor.
Not much.
Enough.
“Andrew!”
I tried to move past the officers.
One stopped me.
“Ma’am.”
“That’s my brother.”
“We’re clearing the residence.”
My father said nothing.
His face had become the face he wore at funerals.
Five minutes later an officer came downstairs.
“No one inside.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s gone.”
Andrew’s phone was found beneath the kitchen table.
His wallet remained upstairs.
His passport was in his desk.
His car was still in the garage.
Someone had taken him.
Or he had been forced to leave.
Rebecca arrived and immediately began speaking with detectives.
Then Damian arrived.
I had never called him.
He walked past the police tape until an officer stopped him.
“Claire.”
I turned.
“What are you doing here?”
“I heard about Andrew.”
“From whom?”
He hesitated.
Wrong move.
“Who told you?”
“Marcus.”
Marcus was still inside headquarters.
I had left him there.
“He called you?”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“I still have people who care whether I know what’s happening.”
My father stepped between us.
“If you know anything about Nathan, now would be an excellent time to become useful.”
Damian looked at him.
“I didn’t know Nathan was behind Avellon.”
My father’s eyes sharpened.
“So you knew Avellon.”
Damian realized his mistake.
I stared at him.
“What did you think Avellon was?”
“A consulting group.”
“Owned by your mistress.”
“I didn’t know she owned it.”
“You transferred millions to it.”
“Vendor commissions.”
“Why?”
“For expansion intelligence.”
I almost laughed.
“You paid eighteen million dollars for intelligence?”
“We were acquiring properties.”
“Without board approval?”
“I was CEO.”
“You were stealing.”
His face changed.
“I never stole from you.”
“Don’t use the word you like I’m the only person you betrayed.”
I stepped closer.
“You forged my signature.”
His silence answered.
My father looked ready to break something.
I had rarely seen that in him.
Damian lowered his voice.
“Nathan told me the board would never approve fast enough.”
“So you forged my name.”
“I thought it was administrative.”
I stared at the man I had shared a bed with for nine years.
The pathetic thing was that part of me could still remember who he had been.
Before the money.
Before magazine covers.
Before assistants carried his coffee and people laughed too hard at his jokes.
The Damian I married had worked eighteen-hour days.
He once spent Christmas Eve helping a dishwasher repair a broken car because the man needed to drive home to see his children.
Success had not changed him overnight.
It had happened slowly.
One compromise.
One entitlement.
One lie at a time.
“Nathan approached me eighteen months ago,” Damian admitted.
My father stepped closer.
“How?”
“At a conference in Singapore.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Damian laughed bitterly.
“You hate him.”
“For good reason.”
“He told me you were using Claire to control me.”
My stomach turned.
“Of course he did.”
“He showed me documents.”
“What documents?”
“Trust records.”
My father went still.
Damian continued.
“He said Cross Meridian would never really be mine.”
“And that bothered you.”
“Yes.”
At least he did not lie.
“I built it.”
“No,” I said.
“We built it.”
He looked at me.
For the first time since the lobby, something like shame crossed his face.
Then it vanished.
“Nathan offered financing for a management buyout.”
“A buyout of assets you didn’t own?”
“He said there was a way.”
My father whispered,
“The succession clause.”
Damian looked at him.
“What?”
That answered one question.
Damian did not know everything.
My father looked toward Andrew’s house.
Nathan had been searching for a clause.
Andrew had found something.
Now Andrew was gone.
A detective approached.
“Ms. Cross?”
I hated that name suddenly.
“Yes?”
“We found security footage.”
A neighbor’s camera showed Andrew leaving at 8:23.
He was walking.
Not dragged.
No visible weapon.
Beside him was a woman.
She wore a hooded jacket.
Her face appeared for less than two seconds.
But it was enough.
Sabrina.
Damian stared at the image.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“She called me at seven thirty.”
“What did she say?”
His eyes moved away.
“Damian.”
“She told me she was leaving.”
“And?”
“She said Nathan had gone too far.”
My father stepped closer.
“Where did she tell you she was going?”
“She didn’t.”
“Think.”
“She said…”
Damian stopped.
“What?”
“She said Claire would know where the first promise was made.”
My breath caught.
The first promise.
There was only one place that meant anything to me.
The first Meridian property.
Before it became a resort.
Before Damian.
Before everything.
My grandfather had taken me there when I was twelve.
It was abandoned then.
He made me stand on a cliff overlooking the ocean and promise that if the family ever developed the land, we would never sell the shoreline.
“Some things are inherited,” he told me.
“Some things are borrowed from the people who come after us.”
I looked at my father.
He understood immediately.
“The old caretaker’s house.”
We left within minutes.
Damian followed.
Nobody invited him.
Nobody stopped him.
The house sat half a mile beyond the resort property, surrounded by pine trees and salt grass.
It had been unused for years.
The front door was unlocked.
Inside, we found Andrew.
Alive.
His hands were tied.
His forehead was bleeding.
Sabrina knelt beside him.
She raised both hands when we entered.
“Don’t shoot.”
My father crossed the room.
“Where is Nathan?”
“Gone.”
Andrew coughed.
“She helped me.”
I stared at Sabrina.
“Then why did you take him?”
“I didn’t.”
She looked toward the back door.
“Nathan’s people did.”
She reached into her jacket slowly.
Rebecca raised her weapon.
Sabrina froze.
“Easy.”
She pulled out an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed.
My name was written across it.
Not Claire Cross.
Claire Elizabeth Whitmore.
I recognized the handwriting.
My grandfather’s.
“He had this,” Sabrina whispered.
“Who?”
“Nathan.”
She handed it to me.
“He’s been looking for the second half.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet.
A handwritten letter.
My grandfather had written it six months before his death.
Claire,
If you ever read this, it means Richard was forced to tell you the truth.
The hospitality lands are not the heart of our family holdings.
They are the lock.
The key was placed where Nathan would never look.
Trust the one person he believes has nothing.
I read the sentence twice.
Then Andrew spoke from behind me.
“Claire.”
I turned.
He looked pale.
“Nathan kept asking me about Mom.”
My mother had been dead for seventeen years.
“What about her?”
“He said Dad lied about what she inherited.”
My father did not move.
I slowly looked at him.
“Dad?”
His face told me everything.
May you like
There was another secret.
And this one had my mother’s name on it.
