Chapter 8 - Savannah’s Second Phone
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Mara backed away.
Natalie called 911.
Police entered within minutes.
They found an upstairs window open.
No intruder.
But on Mara’s desk sat a second phone.
Savannah recognized it.
“I thought Derek destroyed that.”
It had been used for communications about Grayline.
The recovered messages revealed Natalie had indeed attended the Delaware meeting.
But as Sloan Urban’s operations representative.
She had objected to the transfers.
Derek later excluded her from the project.
The anonymous photograph had been designed to make Mara distrust her.
Someone was deliberately creating conflict among Derek’s opponents.
The second phone identified that person.
Not immediately.
But one recurring number belonged to Evan Sloan.
Derek’s younger brother.
Mara had not seen Evan in eight years.
He had been an early employee before a spectacular falling-out with Derek.
Everyone believed he moved to Seattle.
Instead, he had quietly remained involved through shell consulting companies.
Rebecca located him.
Evan agreed to meet.
He admitted sending several anonymous messages.
“The warning about the garage was me.”
“Why not identify yourself?”
“Because Derek ruined my career once.”
“Did you enter my house?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Evan hesitated.
“I think Derek did.”
“He’s under monitoring.”
“Derek doesn’t do his own dirty work.”
Evan revealed that Derek maintained a private security contractor named Holt Risk Management.
Daniel traced one of Holt’s employees to Rebecca’s office burglary.
Police took over.
Derek’s situation worsened.
But Evan had his own motive.
He wanted money.
Five million dollars for the rest of his evidence.
Mara refused.
“If the evidence concerns crimes, give it to investigators.”
“You could lose everything.”
“Then I lose it.”
Evan laughed.
“You really are Mercer’s daughter.”
“No. I’m Evelyn Bennett’s daughter too.”
She walked out.
Two days later Evan delivered the evidence for free.
It contained the missing connection between Grayline and Derek’s offshore assets.
More importantly, it contained a recording from the night Mara discovered Savannah.
Derek had arranged the hotel encounter.
But Savannah had not known.
He deliberately left the door unsecured.
He wanted Mara to initiate divorce because a prenuptial clause gave him strategic advantages if she filed first under certain circumstances.
Rebecca reviewed the prenup.
Then smiled.
“What?”
“He outsmarted himself.”
The clause depended on Mara lacking an ownership interest in Sloan Urban.
The newly authenticated founder agreement destroyed that assumption.
Derek’s elaborate plan had rested on the lie he was now unable to sustain.
At the next settlement conference, Derek finally sat across from Mara.
No cameras.
No reporters.
Just lawyers.
His face looked thinner.
“You won,” he said.
“This isn’t a game.”
“It always was to you.”
“No, Derek. It was always a game to you. That’s why you think someone has to win.”
He offered a controlling stake worth more than Mara had requested.
She declined.
“I don’t want your control.”
“Then what do you want?”
“My ownership recognized. My contributions restored to the corporate record. A fair division of marital assets. And no nondisclosure agreement preventing me from telling the truth.”
His jaw tightened.
“You want to humiliate me.”
“No.”
She looked at him steadily.
“I want to stop participating in my own disappearance.”
Derek stared at the table.
For a moment she saw the young man from the garage.
Then it vanished.
“You think your father saved you.”
“My father didn’t find the agreement.”
“You used his name.”
“You used my work.”
Derek stood.
The conference ended.
That evening Savannah came to Mara with one final item.
A voicemail Derek had left months earlier.
He was drunk.
He talked about Mara.
Not angrily.
Almost mournfully.
“I made her smaller because I couldn’t stand knowing she was the reason I got big.”
Mara stopped the recording.
Savannah asked, “Do you hate me?”
“No.”
“That almost makes it worse.”
“It shouldn’t. You made choices. So did I.”
“What choice did you make?”
“I kept accepting apologies that required me to forget what happened.”
Savannah nodded.
Then handed her a key card.
“Derek keeps a private archive in the old executive suite.”
“Investigators searched it.”
“Not the real archive.”
Behind a movable wall panel was a fireproof compartment.
Rebecca obtained lawful access through discovery procedures.
Inside were corporate records, personal letters and financial documents.
And a sealed envelope addressed to Mara.
She opened it.
A legal document.
A postnuptial agreement.
Her signature appeared at the bottom.
Mara had never seen it.
Rebecca stared.
“If Derek intended to use this, he forged your signature.”
But Daniel examined it.
“It may not be forged.”
Mara looked closer.
The signature was hers.
Then she saw the date.
The day of her mother’s funeral.
Mara whispered, “I signed papers that day.”
Derek had brought documents to the house.
Insurance.
Estate forms.
Company papers.
She had barely been able to see through grief.
Rebecca turned the page.
The agreement purported to surrender nearly all Mara’s ownership claims.
Then Rebecca stopped.
“There’s a witness signature.”
Mara looked.
Thomas Mercer.
Her father’s name was written beneath hers.
May you like
Mara went completely still.
Because if that signature was genuine, then everything Thomas had told her was...
