Chapter 10 - The Inheritance Nobody Knew Existed
Carter stared at the number.
“Three point eight million?”
I was just as stunned.
Whitmore Design Holdings had been the company Warren created when he helped finance my interior design firm years earlier.
After his death, I assumed the entity had been dissolved.
Malcolm shook his head.
“It wasn’t.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“You did know part of it. The company assets were moved into long-term investments. Warren instructed me to classify them as a separate trust reserve.”
“For Carter?”
“Partly.”
My son looked almost angry.
“I don’t want hidden money.”
“This isn’t about the money,” Malcolm said.
“It’s about the condition attached to it.”
The reserve could not pass to Carter until he turned forty.
Unless Malcolm and I jointly determined earlier that Carter had demonstrated independent financial judgment.
Carter laughed bitterly.
“Apparently Dad wasn’t optimistic.”
I touched his arm.
“He loved you.”
“I know.”
That somehow made it hurt more.
Kendall stared at the papers.
“Douglas knew about this.”
We all looked at her.
“That’s why he kept saying we would be wealthy eventually.”
Carter’s head snapped around.
“He said that?”
“For years.”
“And you never told me?”
“I thought he meant your career.”
No.
Douglas had known there was money somewhere.
He had simply misunderstood how to reach it.
My house had been the obvious target.
But perhaps not the real one.
Malcolm turned pages.
Then stopped.
“Donna.”
I knew that tone by now.
“What?”
“Two months ago someone requested information about Whitmore Design Holdings.”
My chest tightened.
“Who?”
“The request was rejected.”
“Who made it?”
Malcolm looked at Carter.
“It was submitted under your credentials.”
Carter sat down.
“I didn’t do that.”
Kendall immediately said, “Neither did I.”
This time I believed her.
We already knew Douglas had used Carter’s identity years earlier.
Maybe he had done it again.
Malcolm called his office.
His assistant checked access logs.
The recent request had originated from an IP address belonging to a business center in Mount Pleasant.
Rita went pale.
“Douglas rents an office there.”
Of course he did.
The entire house takeover suddenly made more sense.
Douglas wasn’t merely desperate for a roof.
He was trying to get close enough to search my records, discover the reserve and find some way to pressure Carter into accessing it.
The bedrooms.
The renovations.
The suitcases.
All camouflage.
“He never intended to live here permanently,” Rita whispered.
“He wanted access.”
I thought about my study.
My filing cabinets.
My computer.
My safe.
Douglas saying my desk took up too much room.
He had been looking at the exact room containing Warren’s records.
Carter stood.
“I need to go home.”
Kendall looked alarmed.
“Why?”
“My laptop.”
She understood.
Douglas had used their house constantly.
Family dinners.
Weekend visits.
Babysitting.
He had been alone there plenty of times.
Carter drove to his house with Malcolm.
They returned an hour later carrying a laptop.
Someone had installed remote-access software.
Months earlier.
The program had quietly copied documents stored in Carter’s financial folder.
Tax returns.
Passwords.
Estate emails.
Scanned identification.
Kendall stared at the screen.
“My father did this.”
Carter’s face was hard.
“Yes.”
Then Malcolm found a folder Douglas had apparently downloaded but failed to erase from the system history.
Its name was H&M.
Harper and Miles.
My heart stopped.
“What was in it?”
Malcolm recovered the deleted directory.
Two documents appeared.
Custodial investment statements.
The children had accounts I opened at birth.
Together, they held nearly $600,000.
May you like
And three weeks earlier, someone had tried to change the mailing address.
To Douglas’s office.
