Chapter 5 - THE KISS WAS A PERFORMANCE
Roman did not react the way Elsie expected.
He did not appear shocked.
He became still.
Too still.
“You knew,” she said.
“I suspected.”
“You suspected Adrien and Marissa were related?”
“I knew Salvatore had children outside his marriage.”
“You could have told me.”
“Based on rumor?”
She hated that answer because it was reasonable.
Norah plugged Diane’s flash drive into an isolated laptop.
There were spreadsheets.
Scanned checks.
Inspection reports.
Payments to city officials.
And photographs.
Hundreds.
Then they found video.
The date was three days before Elsie’s wedding.
Security-camera footage from the Parker kitchen.
Marissa stood beside Adrien.
They were arguing.
No audio.
Adrien pointed toward something offscreen.
Marissa shook her head.
He grabbed her wrist.
She pulled away.
Then Walter entered.
Adrien released her immediately.
Another file contained audio.
Marissa’s voice.
“You said Elsie would never find out.”
Adrien replied, “She won’t if you do what you’re told.”
“What about the ring?”
“Wear it.”
“She’ll notice.”
“Good.”
Elsie stared at the computer.
“Good?”
Roman leaned closer.
The recording continued.
Adrien said, “If she catches us before the ceremony, she runs. Bellamy picks her up. She goes back to him angry. Then she starts asking questions.”
Elsie felt the blood drain from her face.
The kiss.
The open courtyard.
The window.
Marissa looking up.
It had been staged.
They wanted Elsie to see them.
“But why?”
Roman already understood.
“To send you back to work.”
Elsie remembered her resignation.
Her desk.
The twenty-two questions.
The shipment scheduled in three weeks.
Adrien had expected humiliation to drive her back toward the only place where she felt competent.
Bellamy Holdings.
Then someone could continue using her.
Elsie whispered, “I was never supposed to marry him.”
Norah shook her head.
“Not yet.”
“What does that mean?”
A contract on Diane’s drive answered.
A draft prenuptial agreement.
Elsie had never seen it.
Under a hidden appendix, Adrien would receive proxy authority over any Parker-held interests connected to Walter’s waterfront property after marriage.
Roman read it twice.
“Your father owns land.”
“My father is broke.”
“Apparently not.”
Walter had inherited a narrow industrial parcel near the harbor thirty years earlier.
Worth little then.
Worth nearly forty million now.
And directly adjacent to Bellamy shipping access.
Elsie looked at Roman.
“Adrien wanted my father’s property?”
“No.”
Roman pointed to another clause.
“He wanted the access rights beneath it.”
Access to a service tunnel connecting old warehouse infrastructure to the port.
A tunnel no modern customs map listed.
Exactly the kind of route someone might use to sabotage a clean shipment without Bellamy security noticing.
Then Norah opened one final document.
TRANSFER UPON DEATH OF WALTER PARKER.
Beneficiary:
ELSIE DIANE PARKER.
Not Marissa.
Elsie.
Adrien had planned to marry the woman who would inherit the tunnel.
But somebody had altered the schedule.
May you like
Walter Parker was not supposed to die after the wedding.
According to an email Diane had saved, Walter was supposed to die the night before it.
