Chapter 7 - The Woman Richard Feared
Nathan's emergency board meeting began at eight o'clock without him.
He entered at eight seventeen carrying his father's ledger.
Every director turned.
Victoria sat at the far end of the table beside her father.
Victor Kensington was sixty-two, silver-haired, elegant, and composed enough to look bored by scandal.
Nathan had known him since childhood.
Victor had attended his mother's funeral.
Victor had taken him fishing after Richard became too busy.
Victor had toasted Nathan's engagement six months earlier.
Now Nathan looked at him and wondered whether he had helped erase Lily from the world.
Robert Sloane cleared his throat.
"Nathan, this meeting is confidential."
"Then why is Victor here?"
Victor smiled faintly.
"Because my fund has rights under the trust."
Nathan placed the ledger on the table.
"Not for long."
Victoria's eyes moved to the book.
For the first time, Nathan saw her lose control for half a second.
That was enough.
"You recognize it," he said.
"I recognize an old notebook."
"You were never in my father's private office after he died."
"Neither were you, apparently."
The insult was deliberate.
Nathan ignored it.
The board's outside counsel explained the emergency motion.
Nathan was accused of creating undisclosed corporate liability by concealing his relationship with Grace, obstructing a custody investigation, and using company security to interfere with police.
Every allegation had been engineered to sound plausible.
Evelyn sat beside Nathan and dismantled them one by one.
She produced proof that Grace's supposed arrest had never generated fingerprints.
She showed that the psychiatric record used a physician's credentials after he had left the country.
She presented the dead notary issue.
Then she displayed Edwin's recorded confession.
Victoria's attorney objected.
Evelyn smiled.
"This is not a courtroom."
The directors shifted uneasily.
Victor remained calm.
"A frightened old attorney blaming dead men for his crimes proves very little."
Nathan opened Richard's ledger to the surveillance payments.
"Then explain why Kensington Capital paid a private intelligence firm to track Grace and Lily for five years."
Victor's face did not move.
"I have no knowledge of those payments."
"Your signature authorized three of them."
Nathan slid copies across the table.
Victor did not look down.
Victoria did.
Nathan saw hatred in her eyes.
Not fear.
Hatred.
The board delayed the suspension vote pending independent review.
That should have felt like a victory.
It did not.
Nathan knew the other side had expected to win quickly.
Now they would escalate.
When the meeting ended, Victoria waited until the room was nearly empty.
"You think Grace loves you."
Nathan stopped at the door.
"This isn't about Grace loving me."
"It always was."
He turned.
Victoria stood alone beside the window.
"Do you know why your father hated her?"
"Because he couldn't control her."
Victoria laughed.
"No."
She moved closer.
"Because she reminded him of your mother."
Nathan's face changed.
"What do you know about my mother?"
Victoria's smile disappeared.
"More than you do."
"Then say it."
"Ask Grace who paid her mother's hospital bills after she disappeared."
Nathan frowned.
"What?"
Victoria walked past him.
He caught her arm.
"What does that have to do with Caroline?"
Victoria looked at his hand until he released her.
"Everything."
She left.
Nathan called Grace immediately.
She answered on the second ring.
"Are you okay?"
"Who paid your mother's hospital bills?"
Silence.
Nathan closed his eyes.
"Grace."
"I don't know."
"Victoria says you do."
"Then Victoria is lying."
Nathan heard uncertainty beneath the words.
"What happened?"
Grace exhaled.
"After your father forced me to leave, my mother needed surgery."
"I remember."
"Her hospital called and said an anonymous foundation had paid everything."
"Which foundation?"
"The Caroline Cole Foundation."
Nathan went still.
The foundation had been created after his mother's death.
Richard controlled it personally until he died.
"My father paid the bill."
"I assumed it was another way to control me."
Nathan looked through the glass walls at Victor Kensington entering the elevator.
"Maybe it was something else."
He returned to the hidden compartment with Evelyn and Mills.
They reexamined Richard's statement.
The phrase woman I wronged most bothered Nathan.
Grace seemed obvious, but Richard had wronged many people.
Then Nathan noticed the phrasing.
The woman I wronged most.
Not the woman we wronged.
Richard was distinguishing one private betrayal from the conspiracy with Victor.
"My mother," Nathan said.
Evelyn looked at him.
"She's dead."
"I know."
He stared at Caroline's portrait.
"But what if the sentence means the woman he wronged most while she was alive?"
Mills folded his arms.
"And the evidence is held by whom?"
Nathan thought of everyone connected to Caroline's last months.
Her doctor.
Her sister.
Her closest friend.
Then he remembered a name he had not spoken in almost twenty years.
Margaret Bell.
Caroline's personal assistant.
Richard had fired Margaret one week after the funeral.
Nathan had been told she stole jewelry.
He now understood what his father's accusations were worth.
Marcus located Margaret in Vermont.
She was seventy-one and lived alone above a bookstore.
Nathan called.
A woman answered cautiously.
"Margaret Bell?"
"Who is this?"
"Nathan Cole."
Silence.
Nathan heard a chair scrape.
"Nathan?"
"Yes."
The woman's breathing changed.
"Your father said you would never call me."
Nathan closed his eyes.
"My father lied about many things."
Margaret began to cry softly.
"I hoped you would learn that before it was too late."
"I found a statement he wrote before he died."
The crying stopped.
"What statement?"
"It says the original evidence is held by the woman he wronged most."
Margaret said nothing.
"It mentions my mother."
A longer silence followed.
Nathan heard a lock turn on Margaret's end of the call.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"New York."
"Do not come here."
"Why?"
"Because if you found that statement, they know you found it."
Nathan's pulse increased.
"Who are they?"
Margaret lowered her voice.
"The Kensingtons."
Nathan looked at Mills.
"Tell me what happened to my mother."
Margaret began to answer.
Then Nathan heard glass break through the phone.
Margaret screamed.
May you like
A man's voice shouted in the background.
The call disconnected.
