Chapter 3 - The Account My Husband Never Knew Was Mine
Dante took the phone from my hand.
“Trace it.”
His security chief moved immediately.
I looked at the frozen image of Elias beside Graham and the woman.
“I need to talk to him.”
“No.”
I turned toward Dante.
“You don’t get to make that decision.”
“He may be involved in financial fraud against your trust.”
“He may also be the only person who knows what Graham is doing.”
“Or he may be helping Graham.”
“Then I want to hear him lie to my face.”
Dante studied me.
“You always did have terrible instincts about self-preservation.”
“My mother said the same thing.”
“She paid me to compensate.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
He ordered two guards to remain with me.
Within ten minutes, we were back on the pier.
The marina had become chaos.
Local police had arrived because of the crowd.
Reporters were gathering beyond the private gate.
Phones had captured Dante kneeling.
By morning, the photograph would be everywhere.
So much for anonymity.
Rebecca arrived in a black sedan.
She stepped out holding a document bag.
“You’ve had quieter divorces.”
“Not helping.”
“Sorry.”
Dante took one look at her.
“Rebecca Sloan.”
“Dante Moretti.”
“You still overcharge?”
“You still frighten witnesses?”
“Only dishonest ones.”
I interrupted.
“Children, please.”
Rebecca handed me the lien filing.
The signature looked like mine.
Very good.
Not perfect.
But good enough to pass a clerk’s review.
“Where did they get this?”
Rebecca pointed to one curve in the V.
“Your divorce agreement.”
I understood.
The same distinctive stroke.
Elias’s legal team had dozens of copies.
“Who had access?”
“Elias. His attorney. Graham. Several staff.”
“Could Elias have submitted it without knowing it was forged?”
“Possible.”
“Could he have known?”
“Yes.”
Dante said, “You’re being generous.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“I’m being a lawyer.”
“I’ve met those.”
“Clearly not enough.”
I stepped between them.
“Where is Elias now?”
The trace returned.
The Mercer Holdings private phone had pinged near the company’s downtown office.
We drove there.
Dante insisted on three vehicles.
I insisted he stay in the second.
He ignored me and rode beside me anyway.
Mercer Holdings occupied the top six floors of a glass tower overlooking the Cooper River.
I had attended the opening gala two years earlier.
Elias had introduced me to investors as “my wife, Vivienne.”
No occupation.
No background.
Nothing worth mentioning.
Tonight the lobby receptionist looked at me as if seeing an entirely different person.
Maybe she was.
“Mrs. Mercer?”
“Valenti.”
Her eyes widened.
“I need to see Elias.”
“Mr. Mercer left.”
“Five minutes ago?”
She looked confused.
“I—I thought earlier.”
Dante’s people moved toward the elevators.
I said, “No force.”
He nodded.
We took the elevator to Elias’s office.
The door stood open.
No Elias.
No Graham.
But his desk looked wrong.
Drawers pulled out.
Papers scattered.
One painting removed from the wall.
Someone had searched the room.
Rebecca walked toward the desk.
“Don’t touch anything.”
A photograph lay facedown.
I used a tissue to lift it.
Elias and his father.
Charles Mercer.
Standing beside my mother.
I stopped.
They were younger.
Elias looked perhaps eighteen.
My mother looked exactly as I remembered her in the final years.
Elegant.
Controlled.
Impossible to fool.
Elias had told me he had never met her.
Another lie.
On the back, someone had written:
ELENA — CHARLES — ELIAS
1999
THE BEGINNING.
Rebecca stared.
“He knew your mother.”
“Apparently.”
Dante’s voice went flat.
“Not necessarily.”
I looked at him.
“His father could have introduced them once.”
“He said he had never seen her.”
“That’s different from knowing what she controlled.”
Still defending possibilities.
I hated possibilities.
They kept hope alive long after common sense wanted it dead.
A desk drawer contained bank records.
One account repeated across multiple transfers.
I recognized the routing institution.
Charleston Federal Private Bank.
My bank.
I looked closer.
The final four digits were 4421.
My account.
Not my household checking.
My personal reserve account.
One Elias supposedly knew nothing about.
“How?”
Rebecca leaned in.
“These are attempted transfers.”
“From my account?”
“Into Mercer Holdings.”
“They failed.”
“Looks like it.”
Dates stretched over eight months.
Small amounts first.
Fifty thousand.
Seventy-five thousand.
Then larger.
One million.
Three million.
The final attempt, two weeks before Elias filed for divorce, was nine million.
Rejected.
I felt sick.
“He was trying to take money from me.”
Dante said nothing.
Rebecca examined the codes.
“Not exactly.”
“What?”
“These requests were initiated through a corporate aggregation system.”
“In English.”
“Someone entered your account as if it were an authorized Mercer Holdings funding source.”
“Who?”
“I need system logs.”
I looked toward Elias’s computer.
Missing.
The docking station was empty.
Someone had taken it.
Dante received a call.
He stepped away.
Rebecca lowered her voice.
“Vivienne.”
“What?”
“Did you ever give Elias banking authorization?”
“No.”
“Power of attorney?”
“No.”
“Password access?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then someone built a profile from your personal records.”
“How would Graham even know this account existed?”
She did not answer.
We both knew.
Someone close to me.
Elias.
Or someone who had access to our home.
Dante returned.
“The woman from the yacht has been identified.”
“Who?”
“Naomi Clarke. Financial systems analyst. Former employee of Valenti Asset Management.”
“When?”
“Eight years ago.”
I knew the name.
Barely.
“She worked for my mother?”
“For the trust after Elena died. Fired for unauthorized database access.”
“By whom?”
“Me.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“You wanted separation.”
The phrase was becoming unbearable.
“I wanted a normal life, Dante. I didn’t ask everyone to hide criminal conspiracies from me.”
“At the time there was no conspiracy.”
“Now?”
“Now Naomi Clarke is forging your authorization while working with Graham Locke.”
“And Elias?”
“We still don’t know.”
I looked at the photograph.
My ex-husband at eighteen.
My mother beside him.
“What did Charles Mercer want from us?”
“Control of waterfront development assets.”
“Which assets?”
Dante’s expression shifted.
“What?”
“Say it.”
“Charleston Harbor.”
I looked out the window.
The entire eastern view.
Warehouses.
Marinas.
Commercial slips.
Redevelopment parcels.
“The Valenti Trust owns this?”
“Large portions indirectly.”
“How large?”
“Enough that Mercer Holdings would become one of the biggest development firms on the East Coast if it acquired control.”
Everything Elias had talked about for two years.
The waterfront district.
The marina expansion.
The luxury hotel project.
He had called it his legacy.
I had helped him review presentation decks at our kitchen table.
He had complained that anonymous holding companies kept blocking negotiations.
Those companies were mine.
I sat in his chair.
Suddenly our marriage looked different.
Had Elias married me intentionally?
No.
That made no sense.
We met at a bookstore fundraiser.
He spilled coffee on my coat.
He had no way—
Unless.
I looked at the photograph again.
At eighteen-year-old Elias.
Then at myself reflected faintly in the dark office window.
My mother used to carry photographs of me.
Had he recognized my face?
My surname then had been different.
I used my father’s surname publicly.
Vivienne Hart.
I became Mercer after marriage.
Only legally sealed trust documents used Valenti.
“Dante.”
“Yes?”
“Did Charles have photographs of me?”
He went still.
“That’s an odd question.”
“Answer it.”
“He may have.”
“Would Elias have seen them?”
“I don’t know.”
I called Elias.
No answer.
Again.
Voicemail.
The third time he picked up.
“Vivienne.”
“Did you know who I was when you married me?”
Silence.
My heart broke more in that silence than it had during the divorce.
“Answer me.”
“Not then.”
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca heard.
Dante heard.
Every part of me went cold.
“Not then?”
“I discovered it later.”
“When?”
“Vivienne, we need to meet.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
I remembered exactly what happened two years ago.
Elias’s company suddenly obtained new private financing.
He began pushing the waterfront project.
He grew distant.
My hands tightened around the phone.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I was trying to understand it.”
“For two years?”
“There were things about your family you never told me either.”
“You divorced me because I was ordinary.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You said you needed someone who could stand beside you in the world you were entering.”
“I was angry.”
“You filed for divorce.”
“I know.”
“Did you steal from the trust?”
“No.”
“Did Graham?”
A pause.
“I think so.”
“Think?”
“I found out yesterday.”
“Then why were you in the garage with him?”
“He asked me to meet him.”
“And Naomi?”
“I didn’t know she would be there.”
Dante shook his head.
Elias continued.
“Graham has my computer.”
We looked at the empty docking station.
“Why?”
“Because I gave it to him.”
Rebecca mouthed, Why?
I asked.
Elias exhaled.
“He said he could prove you had been using Mercer Holdings to move family money.”
I almost laughed.
“You believed him?”
“I didn’t know what to believe anymore.”
“So you handed him corporate access?”
“I made a mistake.”
“You made several.”
“I know.”
Something in his voice sounded genuinely afraid.
Not for himself.
Maybe that was wishful thinking.
“Where are you?”
He hesitated.
“Old Customs Warehouse.”
Dante immediately shook his head.
I knew the building.
Abandoned property near the harbor redevelopment site.
“Why?”
“Graham told me he would give me the original records.”
“What records?”
“The ones proving what happened between our fathers.”
“Our fathers?”
“My father and yours.”
I stood.
“My father?”
Dante turned sharply.
Elias continued.
“Vivienne, there’s something you need to understand. Charles Mercer wasn’t trying to steal the Valenti assets.”
“That’s not what my mother wrote.”
“Your mother didn’t know everything.”
Dante’s expression became dangerous.
“Elias,” I said, “what are you talking about?”
A sound echoed through his phone.
Metal.
A door closing.
Then Elias whispered:
“He’s here.”
“Graham?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Another voice came through the line.
A man.
Older.
Calm.
A voice I had not heard since I was seventeen.
“Hello, Vivi.”
Every part of me froze.
May you like
Because the man speaking was supposed to have been dead for fifteen years.
My father.
