Chapter 7 - MONDAY AT BROOKS HOLDINGS
Brooks Holdings occupied six floors of a glass building downtown, and Nathan hated it before he entered. The lobby was too bright, the marble too polished, and the security desk too quiet. Everyone who looked at him seemed to recognize him.
The video outside the courthouse had made that inevitable.
Richard walked beside him.
Marcus remained near the entrance pretending to study his phone.
Tyler had been moved to a secure apartment with a court-approved guardian whose address was known to only four people.
Nathan wanted to stay with him.
Richard insisted that appearing at Brooks Holdings on Monday was part of the thirty-day condition and, more importantly, part of James’s trap.
Nathan looked up at the company name etched into glass.
“My grandfather built this.”
“Yes.”
“My father stole from it.”
“Yes.”
“And the CFO may be using it to pay him.”
“Yes.”
Nathan exhaled.
“Great orientation.”
The elevator opened on the executive floor.
Martin Vale was waiting.
He smiled as if Friday’s hearing had never happened.
“Nathan.”
“Martin.”
“I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
Nathan thought of James’s recording.
He said nothing.
Martin extended a hand.
Nathan looked at it, then shook it once.
Martin’s grip was firm.
His eyes were colder than his smile.
“I knew your grandfather for thirty years.”
“So I heard.”
“He loved this company.”
Nathan nodded.
“I heard that too.”
Martin gestured down the hall.
“Then let me show you what he built.”
For three hours, Nathan sat through presentations on logistics, commercial real estate, industrial supply contracts, and minority investments.
He understood perhaps sixty percent.
Martin made sure he understood less.
Every slide was packed with jargon.
Every answer created three new acronyms.
When Nathan asked simple questions, Martin smiled patiently.
When Nathan asked good questions, Martin redirected them.
By lunch, Nathan saw the strategy.
Make him feel stupid.
Make everyone else watch him feel stupid.
Then offer an easy way out.
The easy way came at one thirty.
Martin placed a folder in front of him.
“This is not a transfer.”
Nathan looked at the first page.
TEMPORARY MANAGEMENT AUTHORIZATION.
Richard leaned forward.
Martin raised a hand.
“I expected you to review it.”
Nathan did not touch the pen.
“What does it do?”
“It allows existing management to continue making ordinary-course decisions during your thirty-day review.”
“Without me?”
“Without burdening you.”
Nathan looked at Martin.
“I am in high school.”
“Exactly.”
There it was.
The word exactly carried more contempt than an insult.
Nathan flipped through the pages.
The authorization granted management power over bank accounts, contracts, vendor payments, and records retention.
Records retention.
Nathan closed the folder.
“No.”
Martin smiled.
“You have not read it.”
“I read enough.”
Richard said nothing.
Nathan pushed the folder back.
“My grandfather told me not to sign anything you put in front of me.”
For the first time, Martin’s mask slipped.
Only for a second.
Then he smiled again.
“James was very ill near the end.”
Nathan leaned back.
“You testified to that.”
Martin’s eyes sharpened.
“So you heard me.”
“I was sitting ten feet away.”
Martin stood.
“Then you also heard that he questioned your readiness.”
Nathan looked up at him.
“No.”
“I heard you say he did.”
The room went quiet.
Three executives stared at their notes.
Richard almost smiled.
Martin gathered the papers.
“You will discover quickly that owning shares and running a company are very different things.”
Nathan nodded.
“I’m counting on it.”
That afternoon, Nathan toured accounting.
A young analyst named Priya Shah showed him the vendor-payment system.
She spoke quickly but clearly, and unlike Martin, she did not seem interested in making him feel stupid.
Nathan asked how Graystone invoices were approved.
Priya stopped typing.
“Graystone?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes moved toward the glass wall behind them.
“Those are executive-level.”
“Meaning?”
“I cannot see the authorization chain.”
“Who can?”
“Mr. Vale.”
Nathan nodded.
“Anyone else?”
“The controller.”
“Name?”
“Stephen Cole.”
“Where is he?”
Priya looked uncomfortable.
“He resigned last month.”
Nathan felt a small jolt.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he leave suddenly?”
Priya lowered her voice.
“He cleared his desk during lunch.”
Nathan remembered James’s spreadsheet had been updated twelve days before his death.
“Do you have his contact information?”
Priya hesitated.
Nathan did not pressure her.
“I’m asking as the owner, not as a kid trying to get you in trouble.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she wrote an email address on a sticky note.
“Personal.”
Nathan folded it into his pocket.
At four, he returned to the executive floor.
Martin’s assistant told him the CFO had left for a meeting.
Nathan noticed Martin’s office door was open.
Richard was downstairs on a call.
Nathan stepped inside.
He did not search drawers.
He did not touch the computer.
He simply looked.
On the bookshelf was a framed photograph from a charity golf tournament.
Martin stood beside Paul Voss.
Between them was David Brooks.
The date on the plaque was six years ago.
Nathan took out his phone and photographed it.
Then he saw something else.
A small brass tag on Martin’s key ring lying beside the desk phone.
Number 17.
Nathan stared at it.
The box key in Nathan’s pocket had the same number.
A voice came from behind him.
“Looking for something?”
Nathan turned.
Martin stood in the doorway.
Nathan held his gaze.
“Just admiring the pictures.”
Martin walked to the desk and picked up the keys.
“You should learn to respect private offices.”
Nathan looked at the brass tag.
“You should learn to lock yours.”
Martin’s smile disappeared.
For one second, neither moved.
Then Nathan walked past him.
In the elevator, his hands started shaking.
Richard was waiting in the lobby.
Nathan showed him the photograph.
Then he described the key.
Richard went silent.
“What does seventeen mean besides the box?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Grandpa’s study safe was opened without force.”
“Yes.”
“Martin had a number-seventeen key.”
“Yes.”
Nathan looked back at the elevators.
“Then maybe James gave him access once.”
“Or Martin copied a key.”
Outside, Marcus approached quickly.
“We found Stephen Cole.”
Nathan turned.
“Where?”
“Hospital.”
“What happened?”
Marcus’s expression was grim.
“Car accident.”
Nathan felt his stomach drop.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
The same week James died.
Marcus continued.
“Cole survived.”
“Can he talk?”
“He can.”
Nathan nodded.
“Then we go.”
Marcus did not move.
“There is one problem.”
“What?”
“Cole checked himself out of the hospital an hour ago.”
“Where did he go?”
“No one knows.”
Nathan’s phone buzzed.
An email from an unknown address appeared.
Subject: DO NOT TRUST RICHARD HARTWELL.
Nathan opened it.
The body contained one sentence.
ASK HIM WHO CHANGED YOUR GRANDFATHER’S WILL THREE DAYS BEFORE HE DIED.
Nathan slowly looked at Richard.
He did not accuse Richard immediately.
That restraint felt unnatural.
Nathan had spent the week discovering that delayed questions could be safer than immediate conclusions.
He saved the email header and forwarded it to Marcus before showing Richard.
Marcus traced the message through two relays and a disposable account.
No useful identity surfaced.
But the sender had attached one hidden metadata tag.
The document copy used in the email had been created from a scan generated inside Richard’s firm.
That did not prove Richard leaked it.
It proved the leak came from somewhere close enough to touch his files.
Nathan looked around the lobby at assistants, paralegals, lawyers, couriers, and clients moving through the building.
A law office had seemed like the safest place in his new life.
Now it looked like another system made of people.
James’s warning about signatures expanded in Nathan’s mind.
Maybe the danger was never one document.
Maybe it was the assumption that a professional title automatically made someone trustworthy.
The email did what it was designed to do.
It made every past kindness look suspicious.
Richard finding him in the alley.
The hotel room.
The trust officer.
The legal strategy.
Even Richard’s refusal to let him open the safe immediately now looked different if Nathan wanted it to.
That was the danger.
Suspicion did not need proof to change memory.
Nathan remembered Karen’s talent for the same thing.
She rarely told him outright lies when he was younger.
She asked questions that made him supply the fear himself.
Are you sure your father won’t be angry?
Do you really want to cause trouble?
Wouldn’t it be easier if you just apologized?
Nathan had spent years confusing planted doubt with his own judgment.
He stared at Richard across the lobby.
The attorney was speaking to Marcus and had not yet seen the email.
Nathan could delete it.
He could ignore it.
He could confront Richard immediately.
Instead, he took a screenshot and saved the raw message headers the way Marcus had shown him.
Then he walked over.
Richard stopped talking.
“What happened?”
Nathan held up the phone.
“Someone wants me to distrust you.”
Richard read the subject line.
His expression tightened.
Nathan watched carefully.
Not because he expected to catch a villain in one facial twitch.
Because he was learning to separate reaction from evidence.
Richard handed the phone back.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Distrust me.”
Nathan considered the question.
“A little.”
Marcus coughed to hide a laugh.
Richard nodded.
“That is probably healthy.”
Nathan had not expected that answer.
Richard continued.
“Trust should survive questions.”
“People who demand trust without questions are usually asking for obedience.”
Nathan thought of David.
Then James.
Then the company above them.
He put the phone away.
“Good.”
May you like
“Because I have questions.”
