Chapter 3
The House with Too Many Locks
Noah thought the estate looked like a castle. Adrian thought it looked like every promise he had broken.
Black iron gates parted beneath cameras concealed in the stone pillars. Beyond them lay a broad driveway, autumn-bare trees, and a mansion with so many windows that the building seemed to be watching its visitors. Noah pressed his face to the glass.
“Does it have a pool?”
“Yes.”
“Is it ours?”
“Yes.”
Noah turned slowly. “Then why did we sleep at the motel?”
Adrian had rehearsed an answer to that question and discarded every version. “Because I made choices to keep us out of a life I thought was dangerous. Some of those choices were wrong.”
Noah stared toward the house. “Did you fix all these cars, too?”
Adrian laughed once, without humor. “No, buddy. Other people did.”
Inside, polished floors reflected an enormous chandelier. A house manager named Mrs. Bell offered Noah hot chocolate. His room held shelves of books, an astronomy projector, and a window overlooking the lake. Gabriel had arranged everything overnight. Noah walked past the toys and opened the closet.
“Where's my old blanket?”
It was still in a canvas bag beside the bedroom door. Adrian fetched it. Noah pulled it around his shoulders and sat on the floor rather than the enormous bed. In an instant the expensive room looked less like a gift than a place in which a little boy did not know where he belonged.
“I can make your room smaller,” Adrian said, sitting beside him. “Or we can sleep in the guest room together tonight.”
Noah leaned against him. “Can we get our kitchen table back?”
Adrian remembered the dent in its corner where Noah had dropped a metal toy car. “I'll ask.”
After Noah fell asleep, Adrian walked into the library where Gabriel waited with Edward Sterling and a woman Adrian didn't recognize. She was in her early thirties, wearing dark jeans beneath a camel coat, her hair tied back, and she had a legal pad full of tight handwriting.
“Emily Hart,” she said. “Forensic accountant. I used to investigate corporate fraud for the government. Your attorney asked me to review the holdings without relying on anybody in the company.”
Adrian studied her. “And what did you find?”
“Something peculiar about your disappearance. You transferred management authority seven years ago, but you never transferred beneficial control. Yet somebody has been using your name to authorize loans against a family trust.”
“Forgery?”
“Possibly. I won't say until the signatures have been examined. What interests me is the timing.” She laid out a timeline. “The first questionable transfer happened eleven days after your son started kindergarten. The next one followed an attempt to locate your residential address. This year's payments increased dramatically after Mr. Donovan met your wife.”
“You think they were paying to find Noah.”
“I think someone priced information about your family. I'm careful about the difference.”
Adrian liked the distinction. In his old world, men turned suspicions into verdicts before lunch. Emily was making him wait for proof.
Gabriel's phone buzzed. A perimeter camera had caught an unfamiliar sedan idling near the service road. The car left when a patrol approached. Adrian rose at once.
“Noah—”
“Is safe,” Gabriel said. “Two guards on his floor, one on the stairs. Let them do the job.”
Adrian sank back into his chair. He hated that he needed the reminder.
Emily opened another folder. “We need to talk about the life you're returning to.”
“It's none of your business.”
“It becomes my business when company money funds a threat to a child. I won't help you identify one criminal conspiracy so you can protect another.”
Sterling cleared his throat, but Emily didn't stop.
“If you want independent investigators, you have to accept independent results.”
Adrian looked at the photograph of his father's old friend Marcus Kane. He remembered a man who taught him to throw a baseball, then stood beside the coffin after Lorenzo's murder. Adrian had spent years believing Marcus had died in a warehouse fire shortly afterward. He wasn't sure which part of that history could still be trusted.
“You'll get access,” he said. “No restrictions on legitimate records. Anything you find goes through Sterling to the authorities.”
Emily nodded. “That's a start.”
The following morning, Noah found Adrian in the kitchen making pancakes badly. He was relieved to find that the mansion's stove could burn breakfast just as efficiently as the old one. Noah climbed onto a stool while Mrs. Bell discreetly pretended she wasn't watching a billionaire ruin a frying pan.
“Do I have to call you King?” Noah asked.
Adrian nearly dropped the spatula. “Where did you hear that?”
“One of the men at the stairs said the King was awake.”
“Then he should have said my name.” Adrian knelt so they were eye level. “You call me Dad. That's the most important name I have.”
Noah smiled for the first time since the courthouse. A moment later, his smile slipped.
“Does being a king mean people can take me?”
Adrian felt the room tilt. “Who said that?”
“Nobody. But there was a man outside school last week. He knew Dino's name.”
Dino was the stuffed dinosaur Noah had carried everywhere since he was three.
“What man?”
Noah shook his head. “He said Mommy sent him. He said he'd take me to see the big house.”
Adrian forced his breathing to stay even. “Did you go?”
“No. Ms. Bennett called us inside.”
Adrian hugged him without squeezing too hard. Then he asked Noah to tell a child specialist the same thing later, only if he felt ready. Once Noah went to wash his hands, Adrian called Gabriel.
“Find out who approached the school,” he said. “Through the police. I don't want Noah interviewed by five different adults.”
A minute later, Emily sent a scanned document to Adrian's secure phone. It was a shipping order signed by Dominic Vale. The shipment destination was an abandoned property on Pier Nine. Beside the destination was an internal project name.
May you like
BLACK KING SUCCESSION: DEPENDENT ASSET.
Adrian read the last two words several times. He knew what a dependent asset meant in a financial contract. He could not bear the thought of what it meant to the men who had written it.
