Chapter 5
By sunrise, Richard was in custody, Laura was being questioned, and Thomas was somewhere between Boston and Europe.
Emily sat across from me in a hospital waiting room.
Her hands were wrapped around a paper cup she hadn’t touched.
Nathan sat beside her.
Neither of them spoke.
Thomas’s wife, Karen, was in intensive care.
Doctors said she had been exposed to carbon monoxide in the garage.
At first, police thought it might have been an accident.
Then they found that the garage door opener had been disabled.
The side door had been locked from outside.
Thomas hadn’t simply left his wife behind.
He had tried to make sure she never told anyone what she knew.
That knowledge changed the entire investigation.
Detective Alvarez approached us around seven.
“She’s awake.”
I stood.
“Karen?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see her?”
“Briefly.”
I entered the room alone.
Karen had been my sister-in-law for twenty-four years.
She looked weak.
An oxygen tube ran beneath her nose.
When she saw me, she started crying.
“Robert.”
I sat beside her.
“You’re safe.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, I’m not.”
Her fingers grabbed my wrist.
“Thomas will come back.”
“He’s on a plane.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“What did he do?”
She closed her eyes.
“For years, I thought he was having an affair.”
I stayed quiet.
“He kept secret accounts. He traveled without telling me. He had a second phone.”
“What did you find?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked terrified.
“Millions.”
My stomach tightened.
“From Hartwell?”
She nodded.
“When did you learn?”
“Three months ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her face crumpled.
“He threatened our son.”
Karen and Thomas had one child.
Michael.
Twenty-two years old.
Graduate student at MIT.
“What kind of threat?”
“He said if I exposed him, Michael would be implicated.”
“How?”
“He opened accounts in Michael’s name.”
I closed my eyes.
Thomas had used his own son.
“He said the money moved through companies Michael technically owned.”
“Did Michael know?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“At school, I hope.”
I immediately texted Alvarez.
Find Michael now.
Karen continued.
“Thomas said you were going to ruin him.”
“Me?”
“He blamed you for everything.”
“What everything?”
“For being the successful brother.”
The answer was so childish that for a moment I couldn’t process it.
“Our father always trusted you,” she said.
I thought about my father.
Strict.
Hardworking.
Not always kind.
But fair.
Thomas had been six years younger.
He had always complained that I was the favorite.
I thought he had grown out of it.
Apparently he had built his entire life around it.
Karen squeezed my hand.
“There’s a storage unit.”
“Where?”
She gave me an address.
“Thomas kept papers there. Cash too, I think.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“I followed him once.”
“Did he know?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled with fear again.
“That’s why he tried to kill me.”
I stayed until the nurse made me leave.
Outside, Alvarez was already arranging a warrant for the storage unit.
Then Emily approached.
“Can we talk?”
I looked at her.
“Alone?”
Nathan squeezed her shoulder and walked away.
We sat near the window.
Morning sunlight was beginning to fill the city.
Emily looked exhausted.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
I didn’t answer.
“I need you to know what happened.”
“I’m listening.”
She swallowed.
“Mom came to me eight months ago.”
Before Richard had officially returned.
Before the trust amendments.
“She said you were having an affair.”
My eyebrows rose.
“She showed me messages.”
“What messages?”
“Texts.”
“I never sent them.”
“I know that now.”
She looked down.
“They were fake.”
“Thomas?”
“I think so.”
“What did they say?”
“That you planned to leave Mom after my wedding because you didn’t want a divorce distracting from the ceremony.”
I stared through the glass.
It was almost clever.
Use my love for Emily as proof of betrayal.
Emily continued.
“Mom said you were moving money out of the marriage.”
“And you believed her.”
“At first, no.”
That surprised me.
“She cried for weeks. She showed me financial statements.”
“Also fake.”
“Yes.”
“Then Richard came back?”
She nodded.
“He said he had made terrible mistakes and wanted to fix things.”
“You believed him too?”
“For a while.”
Her voice broke.
“He told me he didn’t deserve to be my father.”
That sounded exactly like the kind of line Richard would use.
“He said you were the man who raised me.”
I looked at her.
“Then why was he supposed to walk you down the aisle?”
“He wasn’t.”
The pain from Laura’s announcement returned.
Emily continued.
“I told Mom three times I wanted you.”
“Why did she cut the suit?”
Emily’s mouth trembled.
“She was furious after our last argument.”
“So she punished me.”
“No.”
Emily started crying.
“She punished me.”
I didn’t understand.
“She knew what walking with you meant to me.”
That hurt in a different way.
Laura hadn’t been trying only to humiliate me.
She had been trying to break something between Emily and me.
And she had nearly succeeded.
Emily wiped her face.
“Richard told me the trust papers were just a way to protect my inheritance.”
“How many documents did you sign?”
“Maybe twelve.”
“Twelve?”
“I didn’t read them.”
She looked ashamed.
“Mom was sitting beside me. Richard was there. Thomas was explaining everything.”
My brother.
The trusted CFO.
Of course Emily believed him.
“I know that was stupid.”
“It was.”
She flinched.
I hated hurting her.
But I wasn’t going to lie.
“You were an adult, Emily. You signed documents involving a company that supports hundreds of families.”
“I know.”
“You should have asked me.”
“I know.”
“You should have read them.”
“I know.”
Her tears fell faster.
I lowered my voice.
“But that doesn’t mean they had the right to manipulate you.”
She looked at me.
“I’m going to tell the police everything.”
“You need your own attorney.”
“I don’t care what happens to me.”
“I do.”
Her face crumpled.
“You still do?”
I stared at the woman I had raised.
She had betrayed me.
But she was still the six-year-old girl who once waited at the window for a father who never arrived.
She was still the teenager who called me after her first car accident.
Still the young woman who cried in my kitchen after college rejection letters.
Love did not disappear because trust was damaged.
“I’m furious with you.”
She nodded.
“I know.”
“I don’t trust you right now.”
Another nod.
“But yes. I still care what happens to you.”
She covered her face and sobbed.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
Not a full embrace.
Not yet.
But it was something.
Detective Alvarez interrupted.
“We found Michael.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes. He had no idea his father had left.”
Emily stood.
“And the storage unit?”
“We’re going now.”
The storage facility was thirty minutes outside Boston.
Police opened unit 247 shortly before noon.
Inside were filing cabinets.
Boxes.
Three computers.
And nearly four hundred thousand dollars in cash.
But the real discovery was inside a locked metal cabinet.
Ledgers.
Years of them.
Daniel flipped through the first one.
His expression became darker with every page.
“Robert.”
“How bad?”
“This goes back at least eleven years.”
My chest tightened.
Transactions from Hartwell vendor accounts.
Fake consulting contracts.
Inflated invoices.
Payments to companies controlled by Thomas.
Millions gone.
Maybe tens of millions.
Then Alvarez found a folder marked R.H.
My initials.
Inside were copies of my signatures.
Hundreds of them.
Tax documents.
Old contracts.
Christmas cards.
Personal letters.
Thomas had been studying my handwriting for years.
Emily whispered, “Oh my God.”
Then Daniel found another folder.
It contained medical records.
My medical records.
Blood pressure.
Prescription history.
Annual physicals.
I stared at the papers.
“Why does he have those?”
Alvarez didn’t answer.
She opened another envelope.
Inside were photographs of me.
Leaving my office.
Entering restaurants.
Driving.
Jogging near my home.
Someone had been tracking me.
My mouth went dry.
Then we found a handwritten schedule.
My schedule.
Meetings.
Flights.
Doctor appointments.
And beside three dates were red circles.
One was six months ago.
One was two months ago.
The last was the previous Tuesday.
I remembered Tuesday.
I had nearly been hit by a delivery truck while crossing the employee parking lot.
At the time, I thought the driver had simply lost control.
Alvarez photographed the page.
“We need to examine every incident around these dates.”
Daniel looked at me.
“You think Thomas tried to kill him?”
Alvarez’s expression was grim.
“I think we need to find Thomas.”
An officer near the computer suddenly called her over.
“Detective.”
We gathered around.
He had opened a recently deleted email.
Sent from Thomas to Victor Hale.
Subject:
FINAL SUCCESSION TIMELINE.
The message contained only one sentence.
If the accident fails again, Laura’s wedding weekend gives us the perfect emotional cover.
Emily gasped.
My entire body went cold.
Then another officer appeared at the storage-unit door.
“We got word from federal authorities.”
Alvarez turned.
“On Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Did they intercept him in Switzerland?”
The officer shook his head.
“He never boarded the flight.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“His passport was scanned at Logan, but security footage shows another man carrying it.”
Daniel whispered, “A decoy.”
Alvarez asked, “Then where is Thomas?”
The officer looked directly at me.
“We don’t know.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph arrived.
It showed the entrance to Hartwell Manufacturing.
Taken minutes earlier.
Under it was a message.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME HAVE THE COMPANY.
May you like
Then another.
NOW I’LL TAKE SOMETHING YOU ACTUALLY LOVE.
