Chapter 6: The Corporate Visit
The black town car crunched down the gravel drive on a crisp Friday afternoon, bringing my father home a week earlier than scheduled. I watched from the second-floor library window as Richard Vance stepped out of the backseat, adjusting his silver-cufflink sleeves and checking his smartphone screen with the usual practiced frown. To anyone else, he was a titan of industry, a man whose decisions moved markets in Chicago and New York. To me, he was a distant guest who stayed in the master suite twice a month and never once looked behind the heavy oak paneling in the barn.
Margaret met him on the front porch, her red hair perfectly pinned, her green cashmere jacket replaced by a tailored cream cardigan that projected effortless suburban grace. She leaned in for a cool, rehearsed kiss on the cheek.
"Richard, darling. You look exhausted," she said, her voice carrying up through the open sash. "The merger must be taking a toll."
"It's not the merger, Margaret. It's the board," my father replied, his deep voice echoing across the courtyard as he handed his leather briefcase to the housekeeper. "They want quarterly projections that simply don't match our current liquidity."
I slipped away from the window and descended the back stairs, my heart beating a steady, warning rhythm against my ribs. This was my window. Pendelton had made it clear that if my father saw the ledger entries showing the missing trust funds while he was physically present in the estate, he couldn't hide behind his corporate emails or pretend the accountants had simply made a clerical error.
I waited until evening, when the house had settled into the quiet hum of central heating and distant television murmurs from the den. My father sat alone at the mahogany dining table, a stack of red-tabbed financial folders spread out before him beside a glass of scotch. The amber liquid caught the light of the brass desk lamp.
I pushed the door open just an inch. The floorboards gave a tiny, betraying squeak.
Richard looked up, his dark eyes narrowing slightly as he spotted me standing in the shadow of the doorway. "Ethan? Shouldn't you be asleep? It's past ten."
"I need to show you something, Dad," I said, stepping into the circle of light. I kept my voice flat, devoid of the trembling plea I used to rely on when Margaret was in the room. I laid a folded sheaf of photocopied bank statements down right on top of his quarterly reports.
He stared at the papers, initially annoyed, then perplexed. "What is this?"
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"It's where the trust money went, Dad," I said quietly, leaning both hands on the edge of the table. "Margaret didn't invest it in municipal bonds. She transferred it to three shell companies registered in Delaware."
Richard stared at me, the color draining from his face as his eyes scanned the routing numbers.
