Chapter 4 - A Dead Man’s Signature
The name was Evelyn Sterling.
Emma stared at it until the letters stopped looking like letters.
Sterling.
As in the Sterling Children’s Foundation.
As in the ballroom where the night had begun.
“No,” she whispered.
Damian said nothing.
Emma turned the photograph over again.
Her father’s handwriting had not changed.
EMMA’S REAL MOTHER.
“She can’t be.”
“Why?”
“My mother is Margaret Hayes.”
“Margaret raised you.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
Damian remained quiet.
Emma hated him for it.
She hated that he refused to offer an easy explanation.
She hated the photograph more.
Evelyn Sterling had been famous in Chicago philanthropy. Her family founded the children’s foundation decades earlier.
She had died twenty years ago.
At least according to public records.
Emma sat on the floor beside the locker.
“Margaret lied.”
“Maybe.”
“About my father. About my mother. About everything.”
“People sometimes lie to protect someone.”
Emma looked at him sharply.
“That sounds like experience.”
Damian’s expression closed.
“Take the documents.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere Mercer can’t reach.”
“Your house.”
“Yes.”
She almost refused.
Then footsteps sounded at the far end of the corridor.
Damian turned.
Mateo appeared.
“We have company.”
They left through a service exit.
Damian’s home was not what Emma expected.
No gold statues.
No armed men standing beside fountains.
It was a restored stone house overlooking Lake Michigan, severe and quiet.
Inside, Damian took her to a study.
Emma spread the records across a table.
For three hours, she followed numbers.
Damian watched.
“You always do this?”
“What?”
“Forget everything else exists.”
“When numbers start forming a pattern.”
“What pattern?”
Emma pointed.
“Your father transferred money from Moretti Holdings into Sterling accounts.”
“I know.”
“But it wasn’t theft.”
She pulled another statement closer.
“He was paying people.”
“Who?”
“Families connected to criminal prosecutions. Whistleblowers. Witnesses.”
Damian’s expression hardened.
“My father protected witnesses?”
“Looks that way.”
“That would have made him enemies.”
“Maybe that was the point.”
Emma found another transaction.
$417,000.
“There.”
The payment had gone to Hayes Consulting.
Then been divided among seventeen accounts.
“Your father didn’t pay mine.”
Damian leaned closer.
“He gave him money to distribute.”
“To people disappearing from Chicago.”
Emma searched the beneficiary list.
One name appeared repeatedly.
E. Sterling.
Evelyn.
But Evelyn was supposedly dead.
Emma pulled up the archived corporate records she had downloaded.
A document caught her attention.
Signed two years after Evelyn Sterling’s death.
“That’s impossible.”
“What?”
Emma showed Damian.
The signature read EVELYN STERLING.
Dated 2011.
“She was alive.”
“Or someone forged it.”
Emma zoomed in.
“No.”
“You can tell?”
“My father taught me handwriting analysis for fraud cases.”
“You were fifteen.”
“He started when I was nine.”
Damian stared at her.
“That explains several things.”
“What?”
“Your childhood sounds unusual.”
“So does yours.”
“Mine involved fewer spreadsheets.”
Despite everything, Emma laughed.
It surprised both of them.
For one brief second, Damian looked different.
Younger.
Almost ordinary.
Then Mateo entered.
“We found Mercer.”
“Where?”
“He went back to Ashford and Cole.”
Emma stood.
“Why?”
“Someone accessed the archive floor twenty minutes ago.”
“My office.”
Damian grabbed his coat.
“You’re staying here.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“That is my firm.”
“Which appears to be run by a man trying to kill you.”
“Allegedly.”
Damian stared.
“You’re defending him?”
“I’m preserving professional standards.”
Mateo coughed to hide a laugh.
Damian looked at him.
Mateo became expressionless.
They drove downtown.
Ashford and Cole occupied four floors of a glass tower.
The lobby guard was unconscious but breathing.
The elevators had been disabled.
They took the stairs.
On the twenty-second floor, Emma smelled smoke.
“My office.”
They ran.
Flames were spreading through the archive room.
Sprinklers had not activated.
Damian pulled Emma back.
“Fire department.”
“My files are in there.”
“They’re paper.”
“They contain twenty years of audits.”
“Emma.”
“My father’s clients could be in there.”
That changed him.
Damian looked at Mateo.
“Extinguisher.”
They forced their way inside.
Emma reached the cabinets.
Most had already burned.
But one drawer had been pulled open.
Someone had searched it first.
Emma found a scorched folder on the floor.
HAYES, DANIEL.
She grabbed it.
Damian dragged her out as flames climbed the wall.
They reached the hallway coughing.
Emma opened the folder.
One document survived.
A partnership agreement.
Her father had not merely worked with Ashford and Cole.
He had founded its predecessor.
And Paul Mercer had been his junior partner.
At the bottom were three signatures.
Daniel Hayes.
Paul Mercer.
And Anthony Moretti.
Damian stared.
“My father owned part of your accounting firm?”
“Secretly.”
Emma turned the page.
A handwritten amendment had been stapled behind it.
IF DANIEL HAYES DIES, HIS SHARES PASS TO HIS LEGAL HEIR.
Emma’s hands shook.
“Legal heir.”
Damian looked at her.
“You.”
“No. I would know.”
“Would you?”
Emma thought of Margaret.
Every lie.
Every missing document.
Every secret.
Then the elevator doors opened despite the disabled system.
Someone stepped onto the floor.
Paul Mercer.
His shirt was stained with blood.
He looked directly at Emma.
“You found the agreement.”
Emma backed away.
Mercer smiled bitterly.
“Then I suppose it’s time you learned why your father really died.”
Before he could say another word, a gunshot exploded from the stairwell.
May you like
Mercer collapsed.
And behind him, someone whispered Damian’s name.
