Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE HER SONS TOOK HER TO
Nobody spoke during the first ten minutes of the drive.
Rain struck the windows of Gideon's armored SUV. Manhattan passed in streaks of gold and red, its familiar streets suddenly looking like a city Rosalind had never visited.
She sat between Beckett and Piers in the back seat.
Gideon drove.
Her cheek throbbed.
But the pain she felt had very little to do with Sloane's hand.
Piers kept glancing at her.
At twenty-five, he was the youngest of her sons, an accomplished trauma surgeon who had inherited his father's temper and his mother's inability to ignore suffering.
Finally, he said, “I should have stopped her.”
Rosalind turned.
“You did stop.”
“Because you told me to.”
“Then I'm glad you listened.”
His jaw tightened.
“She put her hands on you.”
“I know.”
“And Dad stood there.”
Rosalind looked toward the window.
“I know that, too.”
Beckett, thirty, sat on her other side. He was a financial investigator who had left the family businesses after discovering that his father considered accounting rules suggestions rather than obligations.
He had been unusually quiet since the gala.
Rosalind noticed.
“Beckett?”
He looked at her.
“What aren't you telling me?”
His expression changed.
Gideon glanced at him through the rearview mirror.
“Not now,” Gideon said.
Rosalind straightened.
“Don't do that.”
The three brothers went silent.
She looked from one to another.
“I have spent twenty-eight years being protected from conversations men thought I couldn't handle. Whatever this is, you will not continue the tradition.”
Beckett exhaled.
“Dad's been moving money.”
Rosalind closed her eyes.
“From where?”
“The legitimate businesses. Several holding companies. The waterfront redevelopment fund.”
Her eyes opened.
“The Bellwether fund?”
Beckett nodded.
Rosalind's hands went cold.
Bellwether was not simply a commercial development project.
It was the affordable housing initiative she had spent seven years building through a complicated network of land trusts, municipal partnerships, and private financing.
It was supposed to create nearly six hundred homes for families displaced by redevelopment.
“Who authorized the transfers?”
Beckett looked at her.
“That's what we're trying to find out.”
Gideon turned off the main road and entered a quiet residential neighborhood in Westchester.
They stopped before a brick house surrounded by maple trees.
Rosalind frowned.
“Whose house is this?”
“Yours,” Gideon said.
She stared.
“What?”
He parked.
“Grandmother left it to you. The property was held through her estate trust. Dad never controlled it.”
Rosalind looked at the modest house.
Her mother-in-law, Eleanor Voss, had died five years earlier.
She had loved Rosalind fiercely.
But Rosalind had never known about this property.
“Why didn't anyone tell me?”
Gideon looked ashamed.
“Grandmother asked me to keep it maintained until you needed it.”
Rosalind stared at him.
Then said quietly:
“Apparently she knew something I didn't.”
Inside, the house smelled of cedar and lemon polish.
Fresh flowers stood on the kitchen table.
The refrigerator was stocked.
A fire burned in the living room.
Rosalind turned toward her sons.
“How long have you been preparing this?”
Nobody answered.
Then Beckett said:
“Six weeks.”
Rosalind felt the floor shift beneath her.
“Six weeks?”
Gideon nodded.
“We knew something was wrong.”
“With the company?”
“With Dad.”
Rosalind sat down.
Her sons had known enough to prepare an escape.
And none of them had told her.
For the first time that night, she began to cry.
May you like
Not because they had failed her.
Because they had been afraid for her.
