Chapter 15 - THE BROTHER WHO WALKED AWAY
Michael answered my call with one word.
"Finally."
I had imagined our first conversation after eight years many times.
Sometimes I apologized.
Sometimes he did.
Sometimes we said nothing and drank until the old anger became too tired to matter.
I never imagined beginning with a frozen corporate treasury account and a kidnapped housekeeper.
"Lift the order."
Michael laughed.
His voice was deeper than I remembered.
"Hello to you too, Adrian."
"People are missing paychecks because of that order."
"People have been missing paychecks for years because of your company."
I closed my eyes.
"You know about the theft."
"I know enough."
"Where are you?"
"Not in one of your buildings."
"Michael."
"You don't get to use that tone after eight years."
The old anger surfaced instantly.
He had left after a fight with Thomas and refused his inheritance.
I had called him weak.
He called me obedient.
Neither of us had forgiven the other.
"June Carter and her children were kidnapped."
Silence.
"What?"
"Nora Bell took them."
"Nora didn't take them."
I stood.
"How do you know?"
Michael swore under his breath.
"Because Nora is working with me."
The room froze.
Evelyn, Victor, Marcus, and Samuel stared at the speakerphone.
"Say that again."
"Nora Bell is working with me."
"She threatened June."
"Yes."
"She stole wages."
"Yes."
"She kidnapped children."
"No."
"I heard June on Nora's call."
"You heard June on a call placed through Nora's number."
"Do not play games with me."
"I'm trying to keep you alive."
"Everyone says that right before hiding something."
Michael exhaled.
"Meet me at St. Agnes."
"When?"
"One hour."
"Bring Nora."
"No."
"Then I don't come."
"Fine."
He hung up.
Victor stared at the phone.
"Your brother is insane."
"He always thought the same about you."
Evelyn spoke slowly.
"St. Agnes was your mother's church."
I looked at her.
"How do you know?"
"Margaret donated the chapel restoration."
Another fact about my mother I had never known.
I almost laughed.
"Does everyone know more about my family than I do?"
No one answered.
St. Agnes sat on a quiet street west of downtown.
The old stone church had been closed for weekday services for years but remained maintained by a private foundation.
Michael waited in the front pew.
I recognized him immediately despite the gray in his beard.
He stood when I entered.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
He looked like our father.
I probably did too.
"You look tired," he said.
"You froze my money."
"There he is."
"Don't."
Michael's mouth tightened.
"You still sound like Thomas."
"And you still sound like a man who left other people to clean up the mess."
"I left because I found the mess."
That stopped me.
"What did you find?"
Michael sat.
"Our mother."
I stared at him.
"She's dead."
"Yes."
"Then what does that mean?"
He reached into a bag and handed me a file.
Inside was a second death certificate for Margaret Blackwell.
Different date.
Different county.
Different cause.
The official certificate in our family records said she died in 1992 from a cerebral aneurysm in Chicago.
The second certificate said a woman using the name Margaret Sloan died in 2001 from complications following pneumonia in Wisconsin.
Nine years later.
I could not breathe.
"This is fake."
"One of them is."
"Where did you get it?"
"Celeste."
I looked up so fast the paper shook.
"You knew she was investigating?"
"She contacted me three months before she died."
"And you never told me."
"She asked me not to."
The same answer.
Again.
"I am sick of dead people asking everyone not to tell me things."
Michael's expression softened for the first time.
"She loved you."
"Then she should have trusted me."
"She trusted your heart."
He leaned closer.
"She did not trust your loyalty to Thomas."
I looked away.
"What did she find?"
"Our mother did not die in 1992."
"Then where was she?"
"Hidden."
"By whom?"
"Thomas."
Rage surged.
"Why?"
"Because Margaret and Rebecca Sloane built the family office together."
"Sisters?"
Michael nodded.
The torn note in the mantel returned to me.
"They were half sisters."
"Our grandmother had Rebecca before marrying Grandfather Blackwell."
"And the family buried it."
"Of course."
"Why hide our mother?"
"Because Margaret wanted to dissolve the off-book network after she learned what Dad and Thomas were using it for."
I felt cold.
"What were they using it for?"
Michael looked toward the altar.
"The same things Northstar was used for later."
"Bribes."
"Threats."
"Violence."
He nodded.
"Margaret threatened to expose it."
"So they killed her?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"Thomas helped her disappear."
That was not the answer I expected.
"Why?"
"Because she was his sister-in-law and because he was not as far gone then as he became later."
"Dad?"
Michael's eyes lowered.
"Dad wanted control of her voting interest."
My stomach turned.
"He faked her death."
"Yes."
"And told us she was gone."
"Yes."
"I was four."
My voice broke despite every effort to control it.
"You were two."
Michael nodded.
"Thomas said she chose it to protect us."
"Thomas knew?"
"He arranged it."
I stood.
"Where is he?"
"Missing."
"Where is Nora?"
Michael looked at me carefully.
"Hiding from the same person who took June."
"Who is that?"
"Nate Corwin."
"My father's driver?"
"He was never just the driver."
"What was he?"
"Dad's fixer."
I remembered Nate's quiet smile at family events.
The man who opened car doors.
The man nobody watched because drivers were supposed to wait outside.
"Nate killed Celeste."
Michael shook his head.
"I don't know."
"Then what do you know?"
"I know he ran the first shadow network for Dad."
"And Nora?"
"Nora spent years trying to reclaim the Sloane half of the family office."
"By stealing from housekeepers."
"Yes."
"That doesn't make her an ally."
"No."
Michael's voice hardened.
"She's guilty of theft, coercion, retaliation, and worse."
"Then why work with her?"
"Because she found evidence Nate was turning Northstar against everyone, including her."
"The X list."
"Exactly."
I sat again.
The easy traitor was bait.
Celeste had warned me.
Nora was guilty, but maybe guilt and control were different questions.
"Lift the treasury order."
"I can't."
"You filed it."
"On behalf of the family office."
"Which transfers to me."
"Only after a certification process."
"When?"
"Tomorrow at ten p.m."
Thirty minutes after my scheduled death.
I stared at him.
"So if I die at nine-thirty, Nora inherits at ten."
"Under the old terms."
"And if Nora dies?"
Michael looked grim.
"Control defaults to the acting steward."
"Who is that?"
He did not answer immediately.
"Michael."
"Nate Corwin."
There it was.
Nate did not need to choose between me and Nora.
He needed both of us gone.
The church door opened behind us.
I turned.
Nora Bell walked down the aisle alone.
She looked nothing like the polished staffing executive from company photographs.
Her coat was torn.
There was dried blood on her cheek.
She stopped ten feet away.
"Before you decide whether to arrest me," she said, "you should know June saved your uncle's life last night."
I stood.
"Where is she?"
Nora's eyes met mine.
"With Thomas."
"Where?"
"Nate moved them to the old Blackwell funeral home."
I stared at her.
"Why would we own a funeral home?"
Nora gave a bitter smile.
"Because your family has always invested in both sides of a problem."
Seeing Michael again made the years between us feel both enormous and stupid.
He had a scar near his chin I did not recognize.
He had learned to tap two fingers against his knee when impatient, exactly like our father.
I noticed because family resemblance survives even when family does not.
After the first argument in St. Agnes, we sat in silence beneath a stained-glass window Margaret had paid to restore.
"Did you know this was hers?" Michael asked.
"No."
"Neither did I until Celeste told me."
I looked at the glass.
It depicted a woman holding a lamp against darkness.
Subtlety had apparently never been my mother's strength.
"Celeste came to you before she came to me."
"Yes."
"Did that feel good?"
Michael frowned.
"What?"
"Knowing she trusted you with something she hid from me."
He thought about the question.
"For about five minutes."
"Then?"
"Then I realized she wasn't choosing me over you."
"She was choosing the person she thought could leave the company behind if necessary."
That hurt because it was probably true.
"She thought I couldn't."
"Could you then?"
I looked around the church.
"No."
Michael nodded.
"Neither could I as cleanly as I pretended."
"I left, but I spent eight years researching it."
"That isn't leaving."
"No."
For the first time, I understood that Michael's absence had not been indifference.
It had been another form of obsession.
The Blackwell family had many ways to stay trapped inside itself.
Before Nora entered the church, Michael gave me one warning.
"Do not confuse her being useful with her being innocent."
"I won't."
"You do that with people you need."
I knew he meant Victor.
Maybe Thomas too.
"And you confuse being angry with being right."
Michael nodded.
"Also true."
It was the first argument we had ever ended by both admitting the insult was accurate.
That was progress, Blackwell style.
Nora carried a small notebook into St. Agnes.
Inside were names of workers she said she had tried to reimburse secretly after learning Nate was expanding the theft.
The gesture did not impress June later.
"Secret repayment still leaves the system secret," she said.
Nora had wanted to reduce guilt without exposing the mechanism.
That was another form of protecting herself.
May you like
Restitution only became justice when the workers knew why money had been missing and who had taken it.
