Chapter 14 - The Truth About Naomi
Robert Kincaid survived with a broken shoulder and a story that changed the shape of the case.
He had not fallen into the sound. He had escaped through a drainage tunnel and taken refuge in the Vale mausoleum because Voss believed the old man was dead. The shooter had been Rafael, but Rafael was not acting alone.
“Sebastian hired him,” Robert said. “He paid him through the Portland charity.”
“Did Sebastian order Peter's death?” Oliver asked.
Robert looked at Grace. “He ordered the attack. Peter was supposed to be frightened into surrendering the records. Voss made it permanent.”
Sebastian had not personally pulled the trigger. His signature had funded the people who did.
Elena left the interview room first. Oliver found her in the courthouse corridor, standing beneath a portrait of her father.
“You heard,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I spent eighteen months defending a dead man who built the system that killed yours.”
“You didn't know.”
“I benefited.”
“That is not the same as ordering it.”
She turned. “It is not innocence either.”
Oliver had no comforting answer. He only knew that he loved the courage it took for her to say it.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
“Another secret?”
“The worst one.”
She explained that months before they met, she had asked a private investigator to review Oliver's work because his report had uncovered the same transfers Peter had once studied. She had not arranged his promotion, but she had influenced Northstar's board to preserve the report. She had also known Jessica was attempting to access Oliver's files.
“I thought Jessica was working for Voss,” Elena said. “I was waiting for proof.”
“And you used me as bait.”
“At first.”
The admission hurt more because it was precise.
“When did I stop being bait?”
Elena's eyes shone. “When you looked at me as if I was a person instead of a headline.”
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to walk away. Both desires felt honest.
“I cannot build a life with someone who decides my risks for me,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I am beginning to.”
The board hearing was scheduled for the next morning. Elena announced that she would not use the family voting trust to block it. That decision cost her control of several subsidiaries and sent Vale Meridian's stock into a steep decline.
Sebastian's attorneys called it weakness.
Elena called it consent.
That night, Oliver visited Grace. She sat at the kitchen table with Naomi's photograph in front of her.
“Your mother and I were friends,” Grace said. “Before the secrets.”
“You loved her?”
“In the way women sometimes love one another when the world gives them no safe place to be honest.”
Oliver absorbed the confession. “Did Dad know?”
“He knew enough. He was jealous of Adrian, not because of business. Because Adrian had Naomi's trust.”
The family secrets had been tangled long before money entered them.
Grace slid an envelope across the table. “Naomi wrote this to you but never sent it.”
Oliver opened it.
May you like
My dear Oliver, if you are reading this, choose the person who gives you truth even when truth costs her power.
At the bottom, Naomi had written Elena's name.
