Chapter 7 - THE COUSIN AT THE GATE
Adrian Kane entered Marcus’s office with two lawyers and a man Roman
recognized as Silas Mercer’s personal investigator.
He wore an expensive navy suit and the same easy smile he had used since
childhood. The smile disappeared when he saw the open cabinet.
“You went through my records,” Adrian said.
Roman stood between him and the desk. “Your records are in my family’s
office.”
“Not anymore. The company is independently managed.”
“Then you won’t mind explaining the payments.”
Adrian glanced at the binder. “Those are consulting fees.”
“To whom?”
“Companies that provided logistics services.”
“Which services?”
Adrian looked at Marcus. “You know how this works. We don’t list every
operational detail in a ledger.”
Eleanor stepped forward. “The records are being preserved for an
independent review. You may answer questions through counsel.”
Adrian laughed. “You brought a lawyer to a family meeting?”
“I brought a lawyer to a meeting about forged documents and possible
criminal conduct,” Roman said. “The family part is why I’m still giving
you a chance to tell the truth.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
The investigator beside him moved toward the cabinet. Reeves stepped
into his path.
“Don’t touch anything.”
The man stopped.
Adrian looked at Roman. “You have no idea what you’re doing. Your father
spent years building a structure that kept this family alive. Silas
maintained it. Marcus followed it. Now you’re tearing it apart because
you found a few old letters.”
“Those letters were signed with my name.”
“You gave Marcus authority.”
“Not to tell people I never wanted to see them again.”
Adrian shrugged. “The staff had to go. They were loyal to your mother,
not to the business.”
Roman took a step closer. “Why were you afraid of people who cooked
dinner and drove cars?”
Adrian’s smile returned, but it was colder. “Because they heard things.
They saw things. They believed they were entitled to know what happened
in the family.”
“Did you know my mother was alive?”
Adrian looked at the door.
That was enough.
Roman’s voice lowered. “Did you?”
Adrian said nothing.
Eleanor asked Reeves to record the exchange. Adrian’s lawyers objected,
but she reminded everyone that they were on private property and that
the conversation was being preserved for the investigation.
Adrian finally spoke.
“I knew she survived the bridge.”
Marcus looked stunned.
“You told me she was dead,” he said.
“I told you the family needed to believe she was dead.”
“Why?”
“Because she had evidence that could destroy the foundation.”
Elizabeth’s voice came from the doorway.
“Evidence that you were stealing from it.”
Everyone turned.
She stood beside one of the security officers, pale but steady. Roman
had not expected her to come. She had insisted on remaining at the
protected residence, but when she heard Adrian was present, she asked to
be brought to the office.
Adrian stared at her as if he had seen a ghost.
“Aunt Beth.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You don’t understand what was happening.”
“I understand that you used my name to transfer money and helped Silas
remove people who might have protected me.”
Adrian shook his head. “I was trying to protect the family.”
“You were protecting yourself.”
He looked at Roman. “She was unstable after the accident. She thought
everyone was conspiring against her.”
Elizabeth held his gaze. “You told Silas where I was staying.”
Adrian’s expression changed.
Roman turned slowly. “What?”
Adrian backed toward the door. “I never ordered anyone to hurt her.”
“You gave him the address.”
“I thought he wanted to talk.”
“Did you know he had people watching the house?”
Adrian did not answer.
Reeves moved to the doorway. “No one leaves until we have statements.”
Adrian’s lawyers began speaking at once. Eleanor asked them to stop and
reminded everyone that the evidence would be provided to investigators.
Adrian looked at Roman with something close to desperation.
“Listen to me. Silas has more than the foundation records. He has the
original files about your father’s death.”
Roman froze.
“My father died of a stroke.”
Adrian swallowed. “That’s what the death certificate says.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes.
Marcus sat down hard.
Roman looked at his mother. “What is he talking about?”
Elizabeth took a breath. “Your father had a stroke. But it was not
natural.”
The room went silent.
She explained that, in the final months of his life, her husband had
begun to suspect he was being given medication that worsened his
condition. He had asked her to preserve samples and keep a record of
every prescription. After her disappearance, she had learned that the
doctor treating him had been connected to Silas’s clinic.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Roman asked.
“I didn’t know whether it was true. I needed proof.”
Adrian shook his head. “You don’t have proof.”
Elizabeth looked at him. “I have the pharmacy records.”
Eleanor asked where they were.
Elizabeth said they had been stored in the second archive, along with
the foundation ledgers. The key they had found in the chapel opened a
second compartment in a bank vault.
Adrian’s face went pale.
Roman understood then why Silas had wanted the records so badly. The box
did not merely expose a financial scheme. It could reveal that the
family patriarch had been deliberately weakened or poisoned.
Adrian’s phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen, then quickly put it away.
Reeves asked him to place it on the desk.
Adrian refused.
The investigator reached for it, and Adrian shoved the chair aside. One
of the security officers caught his arm. In the confusion, the man who
had accompanied him slipped through the side door.
Reeves shouted for the guards to secure the exit.
The man was already gone.
Adrian was held for questioning, not arrested. His lawyers insisted he
had cooperated. But the messages on his phone showed a recent exchange
with Silas.
“The woman has returned. The son has the box. Move the remaining records
tonight.”
Roman read the message.
“Where are the remaining records?” he asked.
Adrian looked at the floor.
Then he said, “At the old house.”
Roman felt the blood drain from his face.
The old house was not the mansion.
It was the abandoned property where his father had kept the original
family archives.
And Silas had just been given a reason to burn it.
Adrian’s lawyers demanded that the conversation stop and that the
records be returned to their client. Eleanor refused. She explained that
the materials had been found in the family office and were already
subject to a preservation request. The lawyers threatened an emergency
injunction. Reeves calmly reminded them that no one was preventing
Adrian from leaving; they were asking him to remain available for a
voluntary interview.
Adrian turned to Roman. “You don’t understand what Silas was doing. He
told me your mother had stolen from the foundation. He said she was
trying to destroy your father’s work.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I believed there were missing funds.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “I believed what made it easier to keep the
company running.”
Roman shook his head. “You used my name to send people away.”
“I was twenty-one.”
“So was I, when I started carrying responsibility for the business. Age
doesn’t make the decision disappear.”
Adrian looked at Elizabeth. “You could have come back. You could have
told us.”
“I wrote to Roman,” she said. “I sent letters through three separate
channels. You helped make sure he never received them.”
Adrian’s eyes flicked toward Silas’s investigator. The man had stopped
pretending to be calm.
Reeves asked the investigator for identification. He produced a private
security license, but the number did not match the state registry.
Eleanor photographed it and sent it to the prosecutor.
Adrian finally admitted that the investigator had been hired by his
company to monitor the old house. He claimed he had only wanted to know
whether Elizabeth was returning. He denied knowing about the planned
attack at the chapel.
Roman asked whether he had told Silas about the meeting.
Adrian did not answer.
The silence was enough to make Roman’s stomach tighten.
When the message appeared on Adrian’s phone, Reeves preserved it through
the proper process. The wording showed that Silas had been informed of
Elizabeth’s return and the location of the archive. It did not prove
that Adrian knew a fire would be set, but it showed that he had
continued communicating with Silas after learning the investigation was
active.
Eleanor told Roman not to draw conclusions before the records were
reviewed.
“I know,” he said.
But he could not stop thinking about his cousin’s childhood. Adrian had
been the boy who sat beside him at family dinners, who stole pastries
from the kitchen, who once broke a vase and blamed a dog that did not
exist. Roman had never imagined that same person would help erase the
people who had raised them.
After Adrian was taken to a separate room for questioning, Elizabeth
asked Roman whether he wanted to stop the investigation.
“No.”
“Even if it hurts the family?”
“Especially then.”
She nodded. “Your father would have wanted that.”
Roman looked at her. “You don’t know what he would have wanted.”
Elizabeth accepted the correction. “You’re right. I should not speak for
him.”
The old house fire was reported that evening. The first news stories
described it as a suspicious blaze at an abandoned property owned by the
Kane family. Roman declined to comment. He did not want the public to
know which documents had survived or where the copies were stored.
He asked Eleanor to prepare a statement only after the investigators
May you like
confirmed the facts.
For once, the family would not get ahead of the evidence.
