Chapter 6
Marcus’s phone buzzed as we reached the Ashcroft property. He looked at the screen, then held it out to me.
A location pin. No greeting. Celeste had sent it after he told her the board had found a valuation for the logistics division.
“She wants us there,” Marcus said.
“Or she wants the packet moved.”
He folded his fingers around the phone. “You think she’s helping him?”
“I think we should find out what she’s protecting.”
The old carriage house stood beyond a row of rain-dark trees, its white stone walls bright against the evening. Celeste’s sedan waited under the covered drive. A strip of light showed beneath the side door.
Marcus went in first. I followed, with Owen a few steps behind us and the company’s general counsel on the phone in my pocket. The air smelled of wet leaves and the lavender cleaner the property staff used on the polished floors.
Celeste stood beside a table, still wearing her diamonds. Her eyes went straight to Marcus.
“You brought her.”
“I brought the person who can keep Adrian from taking the company apart,” he said.
“That’s a generous way to describe what she’s doing.”
“Where’s the packet?” I asked.
Celeste’s mouth tightened. “You’ve been in a hurry to give orders all night.”
“And you’ve had the packet all night.”
Her gaze flicked to the door, to the car beyond it. “Adrian said those papers would protect the family.”
“From what?”
“From a collapse. From the company losing its financing and dragging everyone down with it.” Her voice sharpened. “You think you’re the only one who understands what a failure would cost?”
The anger in her face looked familiar. So did the fear beneath it. Adrian had given her a story with a villain and a rescue plan, and she had accepted the part that let her feel useful.
That did not erase the way she’d told me to leave the banquet with dignity.
“Which family did he mean?” I asked. “The people whose paychecks depend on Vale Meridian, or the people who get to keep its privileges?”
Celeste’s cheeks colored. “You always did know how to make a question sound like an accusation.”
“I’m not asking you to confess to something. I’m asking for the packet.”
Marcus moved closer to his mother. “If Adrian told you the papers would protect us, then let Eleanor see them. If they’re honest, they’ll hold up.”
Celeste looked at him, and for a moment her expression softened. “You don’t know what he’s under.”
“No,” Marcus said. “I know what he’s done to the rest of us.”
She reached into her purse and took out a key. Then she turned toward the car.
I went with her. The packet was in the trunk, tucked beneath a folded blanket. Celeste held on to it after she found it.
“Don’t make this into something it isn’t,” she said.
“I won’t.”
She searched my face for a promise I hadn’t made. Then her fingers loosened. I took the packet and set it on the trunk lid.
The paper seal had been opened and pressed down again. Inside lay copies of the same vague invoices Priya had flagged, stacked with a draft option agreement. I recognized Larkspur Strategic in the invoice headers. Each one claimed payment for broad strategic or integration services, with no work attached to show what the company had received.
The option agreement was different. Its first pages described Vale Meridian’s regional logistics division. A buyer page had been removed cleanly, leaving a narrow strip of torn binding at the margin. The draft named an option closing date, but gave no name I could follow to a purchaser.
I held the missing edge between thumb and forefinger. “Who took the page?”
“I don’t know,” Celeste said.
“Did Adrian give you this packet?”
“He said to keep it safe. He said the family could be ruined if the deal fell apart.”
“What deal?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
Marcus’s jaw worked. “You could have called me.”
“I didn’t want you dragged into this.”
“You let me carry papers for him without asking what they were.”
“I thought he was trying to save what he built.”
“And you thought Eleanor was trying to destroy it.”
Celeste’s eyes turned toward me. “You had power to stop this from becoming a scandal.”
There it was: not a confession, not proof she knew what the papers meant. Just the same old assumption that the person with power should make the consequences disappear.
“I had power to protect the company,” I said. “That isn’t the same as protecting Adrian from the truth.”
Behind us, Owen’s tablet chimed. He glanced at it, then looked up with a crease between his brows.
“Eleanor. Someone just accessed a restricted file in the Ashcroft property archive.”
“From here?”
“Remote access. It used Celeste’s guest credentials.”
Celeste went still. Her hands closed around the edge of her coat.
“I didn’t access anything.”
Owen turned the screen toward me. “The access log shows an open on a restricted file tied to the logistics division.”
“Can you see the file?”
“Metadata only. I’m checking the title now.”
The light from his screen washed over his face. Marcus stepped nearer to Celeste, but she drew back as if his movement were another accusation.
Owen looked up.
“The file carries an option closing date.”
“How soon?” I asked.
May you like
“Four days.”
The same date as the draft in my hand. Someone had opened a restricted property file under Celeste’s credentials while we stood beside her car, and the account had reached the very date Adrian had tried to keep from the board.
