Vanessa snorted.
“That must be comforting.”
I kept reading.
There was a payment schedule.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Another three hundred thousand upon completion of something called Phase Two.
Then a handwritten note beside Adrian’s signature:
E.M. remains preferred route. V.M. unsuitable.
E.M.
Elena Mercer.
V.M.
Vanessa Mercer.
My stomach turned.
The agreement was dated fourteen months before Adrian and I supposedly met.
I looked up.
“You knew who I was.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“Elena, yes, I knew the family. Of course I knew your name.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“We met naturally.”
“At the Hawthorne Foundation dinner.”
“Yes.”
“My mother seated us beside each other.”
Neither of them spoke.
Something inside me cracked.
I turned toward my mother.
“You introduced us.”
She lifted her chin.
“I introduce hundreds of people.”
“You told me you barely knew him.”
“I barely did.”
Vanessa said, “That’s a lie.”
My mother whirled.
“You have done enough.”
“No. I’ve spent five years doing almost nothing because every time I got close, you threatened to have me committed.”
Guests gasped.
I stared at Vanessa.
“What?”
She looked at me.
“After Dad died, I told Mother his brakes hadn’t failed by accident.”
The ballroom vanished around me.
“What are you saying?”
Vanessa’s voice became softer.
“The three dates with Adrian weren’t dates.”
Adrian shut his eyes.
There it was.
The first truth.
Vanessa continued.
“I knew he worked on Dad’s corporate accounts. I’d found his name in Dad’s study after the funeral. I thought he might know why Dad had been investigating shell companies connected to Mercer Hospitality.”
“You told everyone you dated him.”
“No. Mother did.”
I looked at my mother.
She said nothing.
Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears.
“I met Adrian three times. Once at a restaurant. Once in his office. Once at his apartment.”
“That sounds like dating.”
“The third time I went there because he told me he had copies of documents Dad had asked him to review privately.”
Adrian said, “That’s enough.”
Vanessa ignored him.
“When I got there, the documents were gone. Adrian told me Dad had been paranoid. He said grief was making me paranoid too.”
Her voice trembled.
“I believed him for almost a year.”
I looked at Adrian.
The man I had slept beside.
The man who knew how I took my coffee.
The man who had held me on the anniversary of my father’s death while I cried against his chest.
“You knew my father?”
He swallowed.
“Professionally.”
“You told me you met him once at a fundraiser.”
“We didn’t have a personal relationship.”
Vanessa pulled another paper from the envelope.
“Show her page four.”
I did.
It was an invoice from a garage near White Ridge.
The date was two days before my father’s accident.
Routine service.
Brake inspection.
Under technician notes, someone had written:
Rear hydraulic line replaced at client request. Vehicle released to authorized third party: A. Cross.
I stopped.
Every face became distant.
“No.”
Adrian reached toward me.
I stepped away.
“Elena—”
“You picked up my father’s car?”
“It was different. His assistant asked our firm—”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember collecting a billionaire client’s Mercedes two days before he died in it?”
My voice echoed through the ballroom.
My mother said, “Enough!”
