Chapter 15 - The Man Behind Grant
The message contained an address.
I showed it to federal investigators.
They recognized it immediately.
It belonged to a private consulting firm that had never appeared in any of our records.
The company had financed Richard Vale.
It had funded Grant's private investigators.
It had paid Vanessa.
It had also paid someone inside the Kingsley security network.
The owner was a man named Thomas Mercer.
Grant's father.
He had been missing since the investigation began.
Now we knew why.
He had been operating from a hidden property in Connecticut.
Federal agents moved in before sunrise.
Thomas Mercer was arrested without incident.
During interrogation, he admitted everything.
He had recruited Richard Vale years earlier.
He had directed Grant's marriage to me.
He had promised Grant that if he secured control of Bluebird, the Mercer family would gain effective control over the Kingsley companies.
When the investigation began, Thomas had ordered the mountain attack.
I listened to his confession with a strange sense of emptiness.
All those years.
All those dinners.
All those family gatherings.
It had been a business strategy to him.
A marriage was a transaction.
A child was an asset.
A family was a target.
When I finished listening, I realized something.
Grant had been cruel.
But he had also been raised by a man who taught him that love was weakness.
I didn't forgive him.
But for the first time, I understood why he had become the person he was.
That understanding did not save him.
It simply freed me from wondering what I had done wrong.
Nothing.
I had loved someone who valued power more than love.
That was not my failure.
May you like
It was his.
---
