Chapter 2: The Cold Accounting
The ride home was completely silent.
The interior of my Mercedes smelled of damp earth and expensive perfume gone sour.
Catherine sat in the passenger seat, wrapped in a plush wool blanket Jennifer had pulled from the back trunk. She stared out the window at the passing trees, her face pale, the crooked pearl comb still resting in her tangled hair.
Jennifer sat in the back, her fingers flying across her phone screen.
"The hotel accounts are locked," Jennifer announced, her voice trembling with adrenaline. "I spoke to the front desk at the St. Regis. I told them the authorized corporate card for the Prescott-Hale party was reported stolen. They’re locking the rooms in twenty minutes. Madison’s bridesmaids are going to find their bags in the lobby before the main course is even served."
"Good," I said, my hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
"Dad," Jennifer said, leaning forward between the seats. "Trevor is calling me. He’s called six times in the last ten minutes."
"Block him," I said.
"Ray..." Catherine’s voice was barely a whisper. She finally turned her head, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. "He's your son. He's our only boy."
"He ceased being my son the second he laughed while you were in the dirt, Catherine," I said, the words tasting like copper in my mouth. "A man who does not protect his mother does not deserve his father's name. Or his father's fortune."
We pulled into the driveway of our home—a sprawling stone estate in Westchester that had belonged to my family for three generations. It was the house where Trevor had taken his first steps. The house where we had celebrated every Christmas, every milestone, every victory.
I helped Catherine inside, carrying her up the stairs to the master bath.
For the next hour, Jennifer and I worked together in a quiet, synchronized rhythm. She helped her mother wash the black mud from her skin and hair, while I went downstairs to my private study.
I locked the double oak doors, sat down at my desk, and turned on the green banker's lamp.
I didn't call a lawyer first. I called Marcus Vance, the head of private security for Hale Enterprises—a man who had spent twenty years in military intelligence before I hired him to protect my corporate assets.
"Marcus," I said when the line connected. "I need a full financial and digital audit on Madison Prescott. Not the glossy portfolio her father handed us during the engagement dinners. I want the real ledger. Her credit cards, her past legal settlements, her offshore accounts if she has them. And I want to know exactly how much debt the Prescott Development Group is carrying."
Marcus didn't ask questions. He knew me too well. "I’ll have the preliminary scans by midnight, Mr. Hale. What about Trevor?"
"Remove him from all corporate building access codes," I commanded, each word falling like a stone into a well. "Revoke his executive parking pass. Cancel his company Amex by morning. He is on a mandatory, indefinite administrative leave from Hale Enterprises, effective immediately."
"Understood, sir."
I hung up the phone and leaned back into the leather chair, looking out at the darkened lawns.
For five years, Trevor had worked as the Vice President of Acquisitions at my firm. He had been groomed to take my place. I had given him everything—access, prestige, a multi-million-dollar trust fund that was set to mature on his thirty-sixth birthday.
His thirty-sixth birthday was in exactly three weeks.
I pulled a yellow legal pad toward me, picking up my fountain pen.
May you like
"Three weeks," I murmured to myself.
If Madison had married him for the Hale fortune, she was about to find out that the vault doors could lock from the inside.
