Marcus and I left the hospital at 4:18 a.m.
Neither of us spoke until we reached the parking garage.
The rain had begun.
Not heavy.
Just enough to make the city lights smear across the concrete floor.
Marcus stopped beside my car.
“I want to hit him.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
He rubbed both hands across his face.
“And then I want to go home and pretend tonight didn’t happen.”
“That part won’t work.”
He looked at me.
“You always did have terrible bedside manner.”
“So did your brother.”
For half a second, Marcus almost smiled.
Then the expression disappeared.
He leaned against a concrete pillar.
“How long?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You have photographs.”
“Four months of confirmed meetings.”
His eyes closed.
“Four months.”
“At least.”
“And she sat next to me every night.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head.
“No. Stop saying that. You didn’t do this.”
I said nothing.
Marcus looked toward the hospital elevators.
“What did Julian mean about the company?”
“That’s more complicated.”
“So complicated is business.”
“Unfortunately.”
I unlocked my car.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Julian’s office.”
He stared at me.
“Right now?”
“If we wait, he’ll find a way to get someone there first.”
“He’s still in treatment.”
“He has assistants. Lawyers. Employees.”
Marcus straightened.
“You think he’ll send someone?”
“I think he begged me not to open that safe.”
That was enough.
We drove separately to Vance & Sterling’s headquarters downtown.
The building occupied twenty-two floors of a restored banking tower my grandfather had bought in 1986.
Julian liked telling reporters it was “the physical symbol of the Vance legacy.”
Technically, the deed was still held by Sterling Holdings.
That irony comforted me at five in the morning.
The night security guard recognized us.
“Mrs. Vance. Mr. Vance.”
“Morning, Paul.”
He looked concerned.
“Everything okay?”
“No.”
He wisely did not ask more.
Julian’s office was on the nineteenth floor.
The lights came on automatically.
Glass walls.
Walnut shelves.
Abstract paintings Julian had purchased because a consultant told him important men needed abstract paintings.
Marcus stood at the door.
“I hate this room.”
“You helped him choose the desk.”
“I was younger.”
The safe was hidden behind a framed photograph of Julian and me at a groundbreaking ceremony.
I lifted the picture away.
Metal door.
Electronic keypad.
I unfolded the hospital form.
Six digits.
3-1-0-9-4-7.
I entered them.
The safe clicked.
Marcus inhaled sharply.
“Ready?”
“No.”
I opened it anyway.
Inside were three shelves.
The top held cash.
Far more than someone keeps for emergencies.
Stacks of hundred-dollar bills wrapped in bands.
The second shelf held passports.
Not one.
Four.
Two in Julian’s name.
Two under variations of his middle name.
Marcus swore.
The bottom shelf held documents.
A portable encrypted drive.
A black notebook.
Three property deeds.
And a sealed envelope with my name on it.
My stomach tightened.
Marcus reached toward it.
“Rebecca.”
“Don’t.”
I picked it up myself.
The envelope was not old.
My name had been printed professionally.
Inside was a copy of a shareholder consent form.
My signature was at the bottom.
Except I had never signed it.
I read the first paragraph.
Then the second.
Then I sat in Julian’s chair.
“What?” Marcus asked.
I couldn’t answer immediately.
The document transferred proxy voting authority over a portion of Sterling family shares to a corporate vehicle called Harcourt Development Partners.
I knew the name.
It was one of the shell companies Evan had been tracing.
Marcus read over my shoulder.
“Is that your signature?”
“No.”
“Could you have signed it without remembering?”
I looked at him.
“Do you really think that’s a question you should ask me?”
“No.”
He crouched beside the chair.
“What does this do?”
“If filed successfully, it gives Harcourt voting rights over enough family shares to influence board control.”
“Who owns Harcourt?”
“That’s what Evan couldn’t determine.”
Marcus looked toward the safe.
“I think we just did.”
I opened the black notebook.
Julian’s handwriting.
Dates.
Initials.
Amounts.
Some entries were coded.
Others were not.
A recurring set of initials appeared beside large numbers.
R.V.
Marcus pointed.
“Our father?”
Richard Vance.
Julian and Marcus’s father.
Chairman emeritus.
Seventy-one years old.
Still influential.
Still charming.
Still capable of turning a boardroom silent with one raised eyebrow.
“No,” Marcus said.
“He wouldn’t.”
I turned another page.
R.V. — 1.2M.
R.V. — Harbor parcel.
R.V. — Rebecca proxy before annual vote.
Marcus stood.
“No.”
“Marcus.”
“My father is many things, but he wouldn’t forge your signature.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Tonight you learned your wife was sleeping with your brother.”
His face hardened.
“That doesn’t mean everybody I know is secretly evil.”
“No. But it does mean neither of us gets to rely on assumptions anymore.”
That shut him up.
I removed the encrypted drive.
Then I photographed every page before touching anything else.
At 5:22, my phone rang.
Julian.
Marcus looked at the screen.
“Don’t answer.”
I answered.
“Rebecca.”
Julian sounded weak.
“What?”
“Where are you?”
“Why?”
“Don’t play games.”
“I’m not the one in a hospital bed because my secret relationship malfunctioned.”
Marcus looked away to hide a laugh he immediately regretted.
Julian breathed through his nose.
“Are you at my office?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Rebecca, listen to me very carefully.”
“I’m listening.”
“Close the safe.”
“No.”
“Take nothing.”
“Too late.”
His voice dropped.
“You have no idea what you’re interfering with.”
I looked at the forged proxy.
“I think I’m beginning to.”
“Those documents don’t mean what you think.”
“That sentence hasn’t worked well for you tonight.”
“Rebecca.”
“What is Harcourt Development Partners?”
He went silent.
Marcus’s eyes met mine.
I continued.
“Why does Harcourt have a document bearing a forged version of my signature?”
“I can explain.”
“Do it.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Why?”
“Because this is bigger than you.”
I stood.
“No, Julian. That’s the mistake you’ve made for years. You keep forgetting where this company came from.”
“You think this is about inheritance?”
“I think you stole from it.”
“I protected it.”
“From whom?”
Another pause.
Then Julian said something that chilled me.
“Your grandfather wasn’t the saint you think he was.”
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“What does that mean?”
“Ask Evan Cole why he really agreed to investigate me.”
The call ended.
Marcus frowned.
“Who’s Evan?”
“My investigator.”
“And why would Julian know his name?”
I looked down at my phone.
“He shouldn’t.”
The office suddenly felt less secure.
I called Evan.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
Marcus moved toward the door.
“We should leave.”
I gathered the documents.
Then I stopped.
Taking originals could create legal problems.
So I photographed everything, copied the encrypted drive using a forensic duplication device Evan had given me, and left the physical contents exactly where I had found them.
Except one thing.
The forged proxy.
I took it.
Because it had my name on it.
As we stepped into the elevator, Marcus looked at me.
“What now?”
“Now we find out who Julian has been working with.”
“And Clarissa?”
“That’s your marriage.”
He swallowed.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to know before sunrise.”
The elevator descended.
My phone buzzed.
Evan.
I answered immediately.
“Where have you been?”
His voice was low.
“Rebecca, do not go home.”
Marcus heard him.
“Why?”
“Because someone entered my office tonight.”
My spine went cold.
“What did they take?”
“Only the Vance file.”
I stared at the elevator doors.
“Julian is in the hospital.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because whoever came here knew that too.”
The elevator reached the lobby.
The doors opened.
Paul, the night guard, stood near the reception desk.
A second man was beside him.
Tall.
Gray coat.
I recognized him instantly.
Richard Vance.
Julian and Marcus’s father.
He looked at the folder under my arm.
Then at Marcus.
“You two have had a very busy night.”
Marcus stopped walking.
“Dad?”
Richard smiled.
Not warmly.
“Rebecca,” he said, “I think you and I need to talk before you make a mistake you cannot undo.”
I looked at him.
“For whom?”
His smile disappeared.
And for the first time since the hospital called, I wondered whether Julian had ever been the most dangerous person in the family.
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