Chapter 15 - Naomi Chooses a Side
Naomi cooperated fully.
Not out of loyalty to Cassidy.
At least not initially.
Victor had abandoned her.
Arthur Pierce’s story had collapsed.
She had nowhere left to place certainty.
Investigators asked her to explain how Project Founder began.
Arthur contacted her seven years earlier.
He told her to apply for Cassidy’s assistant position.
The goal was observation.
Nothing more.
At first.
Naomi was supposed to report major trust events.
Relationships.
Financial decisions.
Then Cassidy married Brendan.
Arthur saw opportunity.
The Holloways had their own grievance against Mercer.
The two families began exchanging information.
Naomi passed Cassidy’s schedule.
Margaret passed Holloway corporate access.
Victor connected the schemes.
Naomi cried during her statement.
“I liked you.”
Cassidy listened through recorded testimony.
“I kept telling myself none of it would actually hurt you.”
That sentence haunted Cassidy.
People often maintained betrayal by imagining consequences would remain abstract.
Naomi continued.
“When your pregnancy became public, my father said the child complicated succession.”
“Victor said it created leverage.”
“I should have told you.”
Cassidy watched without expression.
Then Naomi revealed something useful.
Arthur Pierce still controlled one offshore account containing stolen Mercer funds from decades earlier.
Forty-three million dollars.
Money originally taken from Elena’s childhood inheritance before Jonathan intervened.
The account had accumulated investments for thirty years.
Cassidy almost laughed.
Arthur had spent his life claiming Mercer stole from the Pierce family while quietly holding money stolen from Elena.
Investigators froze it.
Arthur Pierce was arrested in Portugal three weeks later.
He was eighty-one.
The news showed him leaving court with a cane.
Cassidy felt no triumph.
Only closure around a story that began before she was born.
Naomi later asked to write Cassidy a personal letter.
May you like
Cassidy allowed it.
She did not promise to read it.
