Because that was the first honest thing I’d heard from him in years.
Then he opened the bottom drawer.
He removed a small wooden box.
“I think this belongs to you.”
I stared at it.
“What is it?”
“Your mother gave it to me the night before she died.”
My heart stopped.
My mother wasn’t dead.
She was alive.
But she had left for Europe three years earlier and rarely discussed her past.
I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry. I meant the night she left me.”
He pushed the box toward me.
Inside was an old brass key.
And a note.
I unfolded it.
The handwriting was unmistakably my mother’s.
Howard,
If Thomas’s records ever come back, don’t destroy them.
Give them to Abby.
She is the only one who was never interested in what our name could buy.
I stared at the words.
My father began crying.
“I didn’t understand it at the time.”
I looked at him.
“Do you now?”
He nodded.
“She knew you’d be different.”
The key opened a storage box at an old bank.
Inside were dozens of documents.
Photographs.
Letters.
Contracts.
And one videotape.
Richard Cross watched it in silence.
It showed Thomas Mercer meeting with a group of investors.
But the video wasn’t twenty-two years old.
The date on the recording was recent.
Only six months earlier.
Lincoln leaned closer to the screen.
“That can’t be.”
Richard’s face went pale.
Thomas Mercer was supposed to have died twenty-one years ago.
Yet there he was.
Older.
Alive.
And sitting across from Kendrick.
I looked at Lincoln.
“What are we watching?”
He didn’t answer.
The video continued.
Thomas spoke directly to Kendrick.
“You’ll have the money by June.”
Kendrick nodded.
“And Cross Global?”
Thomas smiled.
“They’ll blame the family.”
The recording ended.
Nobody spoke.
Then Richard stood.
“My God.”
I looked at him.
“You know him.”
Richard’s eyes remained fixed on the blank screen.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
He swallowed.
“Thomas wasn’t the man we thought he was.”
Lincoln looked at him.
“What are you saying?”
Richard turned toward us.
“Thomas didn’t die in that boating accident.”
My stomach dropped.
“He disappeared.”
“Why?”
“Because he stole something much bigger than money.”
Richard walked to the window.
“He stole the identities and access credentials of several major investors. He spent twenty years moving between countries under different names.”
“And Kendrick found him?”
“No.”
Richard turned around.
“Thomas found Kendrick.”
Everything suddenly made sense.
Kendrick’s sudden confidence.
His supposed connection to Cross Global.
