Chapter 6 - The House Was Never His
David spent his first night in federal custody.
I spent mine sitting on the floor of an empty bedroom.
Lily’s room had been the only room I could not completely clear.
Her furniture was gone.
Her clothes had been packed into sealed boxes.
But the glow-in-the-dark stars still covered the ceiling.
She had insisted David place them there three years earlier.
He complained for twenty minutes.
Then she climbed onto his back and called him her astronaut.
I sat beneath those stars until sunrise.
At seven-thirty, my attorney, Katherine Sloan, arrived.
She carried coffee and a folder.
“You need to sleep.”
“I will later.”
She sat beside me.
“The asset freeze is holding.”
“What about the house?”
“Untouched legally.”
I looked around.
David had always called it our estate.
It never had been.
My father had purchased the property through the Mercer Family Trust before my marriage.
David had lived here for eleven years without ever owning a brick.
He simply acted as though everything around him belonged to him.
Katherine opened the folder.
“The emergency board meeting is scheduled for Monday.”
“Will they remove him?”
“They may.”
“May?”
“He still controls several proxy votes.”
I frowned.
“I own fifty-one percent.”
“You own fifty-one percent of the Class A voting shares.”
“David quietly accumulated enough proxy authority to challenge that control.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
Katherine hesitated.
“That’s the problem.”
She showed me a document.
It carried my signature.
I stared at it.
“I never signed this.”
“I know.”
The document transferred temporary proxy authority over twelve percent of my shares to David.
The date was eight months earlier.
I remembered that week.
Lily had influenza.
I barely slept.
David had placed a stack of tax documents in front of me while I sat beside her bed.
He told me everything was routine.
“I signed three documents.”
Katherine nodded.
“This was not one of them.”
“So he forged it.”
“We need to prove that.”
My phone rang.
Agent Cole.
I answered immediately.
“We unlocked the second phone,” he said.
My heart started pounding.
“What was on it?”
“Messages.”
“With Nolan Pierce?”
Nolan was David’s CFO.
“Yes.”
“There are also drafts of documents bearing your electronic signature.”
I closed my eyes.
“That proves it.”
“Not entirely.”
“Why not?”
“Because the signing certificate appears legitimate.”
I looked at Katherine.
“What does that mean?”
Agent Cole answered.
“It means whoever created the documents had access to your actual authentication key.”
Only four people had ever known where that key was stored.
Me.
David.
Katherine.
And one other person.
My father’s former estate administrator.
A man I had trusted since childhood.
Thomas Grant.
Agent Cole lowered his voice.
“Maya, when did you last speak to Thomas?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Do not contact him.”
“Why?”
A pause.
“Because his house is empty.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“And his passport was scanned at O’Hare yesterday.”
May you like
Thomas had left the country twelve hours before David returned.
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