Chapter 4 - The Broken Alliance
Z
Julian Vance did not flinch, but the muscle in his jaw clenched tight enough to betray his irritation. He pulled a pristine white business card from his pocket and slid it between the doorframe and the weatherstripping.
“A spirited woman,” Vance remarked, his voice smooth as aged whiskey. “Your mother had the same fire. But remember this, Mrs. Price: Grant Bellweather was an amateur playing with kindergarten toys. He forged signatures on loan packets because he was desperate and weak. I don’t forge documents. I buy the institutions that enforce them. You have forty-eight hours to accept a cash settlement of ten million dollars and sign over the downtown deeds. If you refuse, your legal-aid clinic at Evelyn Price House will lose its state charter by Friday, and Naomi Chen will find herself facing an ethics disbarment inquiry before the Virginia State Bar.”
He gave a slight, mockingly polite tip of his head, turned, and disappeared back into the town car. The engine purred smoothly as the vehicle vanished down the quiet, tree-lined street.
I closed the heavy oak door and slid the deadbolts shut. Naomi had already reached for her phone, her fingers furiously dialing. “He’s bluffing about the bar inquiry,” she said, though the slight tremor in her voice signaled that Vance’s influence was genuine. “Vance sits on the governor’s advisory council for judicial nominations. He has judges in his pocket across the Fourth Circuit.”
“He’s not bluffing, but he is terrified,” I said, walking back toward the island. “If he were confident in his legal clawback, he wouldn’t be offering me ten million dollars on my front porch at nine o’clock at night. He knows Evelyn had the Cayman records.”
The next morning, I received an unexpected visitor at Evelyn Price House. Detective Miller, the lead investigator who had arrested Grant on the day of the closing, arrived in plainclothes, carrying a cardboard coffee cup.
“Mrs. Price, I thought you should know,” Miller said, sitting across from me in my mother’s former office. “We had an incident at the detention facility last night. Grant was attacked in the exercise yard.”
I felt a sudden, visceral jolt in my chest—not of grief, but of acute wariness. “Is he alive?”
“He took three fractured ribs and a concussion, but he’ll recover,” Miller replied, leaning forward. “The guys who jumped him weren’t regular inmates. They were transfers from a federal holding facility in Petersburg. Before they put him in the infirmary, Grant demanded to speak with you. He claims he has information about who ordered the hit, and he won’t talk to the Commonwealth’s attorney unless you’re in the room.”
An hour later, Naomi and I cleared security at the county jail. The sterile smell of floor wax and industrial disinfectant brought back the suffocating panic of the windowless storage room, but I forced my chin up. When the guard brought Grant in, he looked nothing like the polished, condescending man who had squeezed my shoulder in the Mercer & Blythe conference room. His left eye was swollen purple, his arm was bound in a sling, and the arrogance had been beaten out of him, replaced by raw, trembling panic.
“Rebecca,” Grant rasped, his breath rattling against his damaged ribs as he sat across the stainless steel table. “You have to help me. They’re going to kill me in here.”
“You made your bed, Grant,” I said, keeping my hands folded flat. “You locked me in a basement while my mother was lowered into the ground. Why would I lift a finger to save you?”
“Because it was Vance!” Grant gasped, leaning as close as his restraints allowed. “My mother didn’t come up with the plan to steal your properties on her own! Diane was in debt to Julian Vance for five million dollars in back interest! Vance told her that if we didn’t deliver the downtown commercial parcels using Bellweather Holdings as the vehicle, he would expose my father’s fraud and have us both ruined. Diane gave me the forged documents. Vance’s lawyers drafted the fake transfer packet!”
Naomi leaned in, her voice razor-sharp. “Can you prove Julian Vance’s firm drafted the fraudulent conveyance, Grant?”
“Check Diane’s private safe at her country club locker,” Grant choked out, a bead of sweat dripping down his temple. “She kept the encrypted thumb drive Vance’s courier brought to our house two weeks before Evelyn died. It has all the email headers and metadata. Vance promised her twenty percent of the development if she got Rebecca’s signature. Just… please, Rebecca. Tell the prosecutor I’m cooperating. Get me moved to protective custody.”
May you like
I stared at the man I had lived with for twelve miserable years. He had tried to break my spirit, but now he was begging me to be his savior.
“I’ll tell the prosecutor you gave us a lead,” I said evenly. “Nothing more. You saved your skin today, Grant, but you will still serve every single day of your sentence.”
