Chapter 2 - THE LEDGER MY MOTHER LEFT
I left the gala with Nathaniel Mercer.
Not because he ordered me.
Because my employer had suddenly become a room full of men interested in my dead mother’s bookkeeping.
His SUV was waiting outside.
Snow had begun falling over the lodge.
I stopped beside the door.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere private.”
“No.”
Nathaniel looked at me.
“I have an apartment ten minutes away.”
“Then go there.”
One corner of his mouth moved.
“You’re not coming?”
“Correct.”
“Where will you go?”
“My room.”
Grant had provided employee rooms at the lodge.
Nathaniel looked toward the entrance.
“Blackridge-controlled floor.”
Right.
Then:
“My car.”
He glanced at the snow.
“You drive the sedan with the damaged left taillight?”
I stared.
“How do you know my car?”
“Security ran plates when I arrived.”
“That is deeply unsettling.”
“Yes.”
At least honest.
I chose a public hotel across town.
My credit card.
My room.
Nathaniel took another room on the same floor after I made it clear he was not entering mine.
At 2:08 a.m., I called my landlord.
“Can you check whether anyone has entered my apartment?”
Silence.
Then:
“Actually, yes.”
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Who?”
“Maintenance request.”
I had made none.
The cedar box.
I called police.
Not Nathaniel.
Then asked my landlord to preserve camera footage.
By morning, we knew someone had entered.
Nothing visibly stolen.
But my bedroom closet had been searched.
The cedar box?
Still there.
My landlord photographed it.
Lock intact.
Nathaniel stood near the hotel window while I spoke to officers.
When the call ended, he asked:
“Can I tell you something now?”
“Depends.”
“Your mother’s ledger is not valuable because of payroll.”
“What is it?”
“Land rights.”
I stared.
He explained.
Twenty years earlier, Blackridge and Pinehaven jointly purchased timberland along the Idaho-Wyoming corridor.
Public records showed Blackridge later acquired Pinehaven’s interest.
Nathaniel believed the transfer was fraudulent.
“What does my mother have to do with that?”
“She processed wage and contractor records for the original holding company.”
“So?”
“Payroll proves who was working which tracts when.”
I frowned.
“That matters?”
“In land litigation, historical operations can matter.”
Then he added:
“Your mother also witnessed the side agreement.”
“What agreement?”
Nathaniel looked directly at me.
“The one saying Blackridge could never sell Pinehaven’s mineral rights without consent.”
I almost laughed.
“Mineral rights?”
“Lithium-bearing clay.”
My mouth went dry.
Modern exploration had made the land enormously valuable.
How valuable?
Nathaniel answered before I asked.
“Potentially hundreds of millions.”
There.
That explained everyone.
The Cross family.
Daniel.
Grant.
Nathaniel.
Then:
“Why would Daniel know?”
“Because Madeline’s father is financing the new extraction venture.”
Of course.
Daniel’s public choice of Madeline was not only marriage politics.
It was capital.
Then I asked:
“Why humiliate me?”
Nathaniel’s expression darkened.
“To prove Daniel had no conflict with you before signing alliance documents.”
“What conflict?”
“If you inherited your mother’s evidence, a relationship with you could undermine his position.”
I felt sick.
Daniel did not merely choose Madeline.
He needed the room to believe he had never truly chosen me.
Then my phone rang.
Grant Holloway.
I answered.
His voice was calm.
“Your employment has been suspended pending review.”
I laughed.
“For being humiliated?”
“For removing confidential payroll material.”
“I removed nothing.”
Pause.
Then:
May you like
“Bring Eleanor Hayes’s cedar box to my office tomorrow.”
Now I knew exactly why I would not.
