Chapter 5 - Tideglass
Sloane Avery answered Nora’s call on the fourth ring.
“I told you to stop.”
“Your name is on a corporation that stole money from a housing trust.”
Silence.
“Where are you?” Nora asked.
“Maui.”
“I know. I’m coming.”
“Don’t.”
“You don’t get to give me instructions.”
Sloane inhaled sharply. “Adrian said you’d threaten me.”
“Did he also say he left his mother in an emergency room?”
“He said June was being treated.”
“She was dying alone.”
Another silence, longer this time.
“He told me she was manipulative,” Sloane said. “He said she’d used illness to control him since childhood.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I believed the version that let me sleep.”
Nora closed her eyes. “Then wake up.”
She booked a flight that afternoon. Mara tried to stop her, pointing out that Adrian could accuse her of harassment or worse. Nora listened, then placed the original trust documents on the table between them.
“If I stay here, he gets time to move the money.”
“The police can stop him.”
“They can stop him when they have a case. I’m going to find the rest of the case.”
Thomas arranged for Nora to meet a Hawaiian attorney named Keoni Park, who agreed to review the records. The next morning, Nora landed beneath a sky so bright it seemed designed to hide things.
Sloane had told her not to come. Adrian had not known she was there.
Tideglass sat above a crescent of white sand on the north coast, a modern glass house wrapped around a stone plantation cottage. Construction crews moved across the grounds. Beyond them, the ocean flashed silver beneath the sun.
Nora parked beside a stack of lumber. A man in a linen shirt stepped from the villa.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“You’re Adrian.”
He looked older than he had in the video. His hair was windblown, his face tanned, and his wedding ring was gone.
“Nora.”
“You lied about Phoenix.”
“I was going to explain.”
“You left your mother to die.”
His jaw tightened. “June has always known how to create a crisis.”
“She gave me a key.”
For the first time, fear crossed his face.
“What key?”
Nora smiled without warmth. “The one that opens your future.”
He moved toward her. “Give me the documents.”
“You don’t know what I have.”
“I know you have no idea what you’re doing.”
“I know about Blue Current. I know about the transfers. I know you forged June’s signature and planned to make me sign a separation agreement blaming me for your departure.”
Adrian’s expression hardened. “You’ve been talking to people.”
“People you threatened.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“The mistake was thinking you were clever because nobody challenged you.”
Sloane appeared in the doorway behind him. She wore a white shirt, bare feet, and a look of profound exhaustion.
“Adrian,” she said.
He turned. “Go inside.”
“No.”
He stared at her. “Excuse me?”
“I said no.”
Nora watched the change in Sloane. It was small but unmistakable, as if a door had opened somewhere behind her eyes.
“She knows,” Sloane said. “She knows about the trust.”
“She knows a story your wife invented.”
“The bank called me.”
Adrian took one step toward her. “What bank?”
“The one holding the loan on Tideglass.”
His face lost color.
Sloane looked at Nora. “He used the same money as collateral twice. Once for the resort, once for this house. If the trust calls the debt, everything goes.”
“You signed the loan,” Adrian said.
“You told me the money was clean.”
“You knew what we were building.”
“I knew what you told me.”
Nora heard a truck pull up beyond the trees. Keoni Park stepped onto the property with a woman carrying a camera and another carrying a box of legal files.
“Mr. Ellis,” Keoni called. “You have been served with an emergency injunction preventing transfer of any Blue Current assets.”
Adrian’s eyes snapped toward Nora.
“You did this?”
“I called a lawyer.”
“You flew across the ocean to ruin me?”
“No. You ruined yourself. I’m only making sure the wreckage can be seen.”
Adrian lunged for the files in Keoni’s hands. The woman with the camera stepped between them. Sloane flinched, but Nora did not move.
“Where is the rest of the evidence?” Adrian demanded.
“Ask your mother,” Nora said.
His face twisted. “She’s not your family.”
“She became my family when you left her alone.”
For a moment, the ocean was the only sound.
Then Adrian’s phone rang. He glanced at it and answered.
“What?”
He listened. His shoulders dropped.
“No,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
He looked at Nora.
“What happened?” Sloane asked.
Adrian hung up. “The hospital says June signed something this morning.”
Nora’s heart stumbled.
“Signed what?”
“A new power of attorney.”
Keoni took out his phone. “She revoked your authority over the trust.”
Adrian stared at him.
“And she named Nora Ellis as temporary trustee.”
The world seemed to narrow to the sound of the waves.
Sloane whispered, “She knew she might not wake up.”
May you like
Nora looked at the villa, the stolen money, and the life Adrian had staged beside the sea.
“Then we’d better finish what she started.”
