Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO SURVIVED
We reached Diana's apartment in nine minutes.
Walter was gone.
Diana wasn't.
We found her locked inside the bathroom.
Bruised.
Bleeding from her lip.
Alive.
The apartment had been destroyed.
One thing was missing.
The engagement ring.
My ring.
“That doesn't make sense,” Adrian said.
It did to Diana.
She started crying.
“My father told me never to take it off.”
I stared.
“What?”
“The ring came from him.”
My stomach turned.
“You told me it belonged to your grandmother.”
“I know.”
“What was inside it?”
“I don't know.”
“Diana.”
“I swear.”
She had manipulated the engagement from the beginning.
Not the proposal itself.
That part had been mine.
But six months earlier, she'd casually shown me an antique diamond ring and said it had belonged to her grandmother.
I proposed with it.
Thomas had provided it.
Why?
Adrian examined photographs.
“There may have been a cavity beneath the setting.”
A micro-storage device.
The ledger?
Thomas had hidden evidence literally on Diana's hand, assuming nobody would search the engagement ring of Marcus Ellison's future wife.
Brilliant.
Cruel.
And now Walter had it.
“Why didn't your father tell you?”
Diana looked at me.
“Because he doesn't trust me.”
“Why?”
“Because I chose you.”
There was no triumph in her voice.
Only exhaustion.
“He told me to get close to you. Learn what you knew. Find out whether you were involved.”
“And?”
“I told him you weren't.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted me to continue anyway.”
“For the company?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I stopped reporting to him.”
“When?”
“Eleven months ago.”
The same time Walter contacted Rosa.
Interesting.
Thomas lost Diana as an inside source.
Walter suddenly activated Rosa.
Two men who had supposedly been on the same side seventeen years ago were now running separate operations.
Maybe they weren't allies anymore.
Diana looked at me.
“I know you don't believe anything I say.”
“I believe some of it.”
That surprised her.
“I don't know which parts yet.”
“Fair.”
She touched her bruised lip.
“Marcus…”
“Yes?”
“I did love you.”
Past tense.
It hurt.
Maybe she intended it to.
“Did?”
She looked away.
“I don't know what I'm allowed to call it anymore.”
Neither did I.
We found Grant at his townhouse the next morning.
I expected denial.
Instead he poured coffee.
“You finally figured out Dad was laundering money.”
“Dad wasn't.”
Grant looked at me.
“What?”
“Someone inside the company was.”
Grant laughed.
“You think I don't know?”
Now I stopped.
“You knew?”
“Since I was twenty-six.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because Dad made me promise.”
Everything inside me tightened.
Grant opened a safe.
Inside were financial records.
Seventeen years of them.
“I've spent my entire adult life cleaning this company.”
“Quietly?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because exposure would have destroyed thirty thousand jobs.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It was cowardly.”
I wasn't prepared for that.
Grant sat.
“Dad discovered Walter Briggs was moving money through security contractors. Thomas found the accounts. They planned to go to federal authorities.”
“Then Dad died.”
“Yes.”
“Who killed him?”
“I thought Thomas.”
“Dad's tape says otherwise.”
Grant looked at me.
“What tape?”
I told him.
His face changed when I repeated our father's words.
Trust Grant. But do not trust him blindly.
He laughed.
Then cried.
I'd seen my brother cry once before.
At Dad's funeral.
“Of course he said that.”
“What don't you know, Grant?”
He looked up.
“What?”
“Walter told someone you don't know something.”
Grant became still.
Then he walked to the safe again.
Removed an envelope.
“I know one thing I've never told you.”
“What?”
“Dad didn't die at the warehouse.”
My pulse stopped.
“The coroner—”
“Was paid.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
“Where did he die?”
Grant swallowed.
“St. Catherine's Hospital.”
I stared.
“He survived the fire?”
“He wasn't in it.”
“Then why—”
“His body was moved afterward.”
The room tilted.
“How did he die?”
Grant handed me the envelope.
Inside was a death certificate I'd never seen.
Cause:
Blunt-force trauma to the skull.
Time of death:
11:42 p.m.
The warehouse fire started at 1:06 a.m.
My father had been dead for more than an hour.
Then I saw the physician's signature.
Dr. Samuel Caldwell.
Diana's grandfather.
May you like
The man whose surname she still carried.
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