Chapter 5 - The Signature“I didn’t sign it.”
Naomi enlarged the scan.
“Are you certain?”
Damien almost laughed.
“That isn’t how I sign my middle initial.”
The signature looked convincing.
But not perfect.
Naomi nodded.
“That matters.”
“Someone forged my signature?”
“Possibly. Or a digital or copied signature was applied to a document you never knowingly authorized. We need the original records before making that accusation.”
Damien paced.
“What exactly did this document authorize?”
“A related-party loan from the foundation to Northlight.”
“For how much?”
“Eight hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“The amount in Sofia’s shredded paper.”
“Yes.”
“And my signature supposedly approved it?”
“As a board member.”
Damien remembered endless stacks of documents after his father’s death.
Estate papers.
Foundation minutes.
Trust acknowledgments.
Insurance.
Corporate resolutions.
Bernice had placed colored tabs wherever he needed to sign.
He had trusted her.
That realization made his stomach turn.
Amelia appeared at the library door.
“Daddy?”
He immediately closed the laptop.
“Hey.”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
“At Grandma?”
Damien considered the answer.
“Yes.”
Amelia climbed onto the sofa.
“Is she mad at me?”
“That isn’t your responsibility.”
“But she thinks I hid something.”
Damien sat beside her.
“The key?”
Amelia nodded.
“Do you know where it is?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
Amelia stared toward the library entrance.
“Not while Grandma is here.”
That was enough.
Damien did not pressure her.
“Then we’ll leave.”
Bernice objected when she saw suitcases.
“You are not taking Amelia out of this house because you’re angry with me.”
Damien turned.
“She is my daughter.”
“And this is her home.”
“She’ll be staying with me.”
“You travel constantly.”
“Then I stop traveling.”
Bernice’s eyes narrowed.
“You have a company to run.”
“I have a daughter to raise.”
For once, Bernice had no immediate answer.
Damien took Amelia and moved into a furnished apartment his company maintained downtown.
Sofia accepted his offer to stay in a separate employee unit nearby until the investigation settled.
Two days later, a child-protection investigator interviewed Damien and Amelia separately.
Damien hated every second of it.
But he cooperated.
The investigator explained that the video would be preserved as evidence and that Bernice could not be left alone with Amelia while the matter was being assessed.
Damien did not need to be told twice.
That evening, Amelia finally brought him the key.
It was tiny.
Blue enamel.
She had hidden it inside the plastic base of an old snow globe Elise had given her.
“Mommy showed me how.”
Damien held the key.
“What does it open?”
Amelia shook her head.
“She said you would know.”
But Damien didn’t.
For three days, he searched.
Desk drawers.
Jewelry cabinets.
Old storage trunks.
Nothing.
Then Sofia remembered something.
“Mrs. Elise had a cabinet in the greenhouse.”
Damien stared at her.
“The greenhouse?”
“She used to keep papers there sometimes.”
Elise had loved gardening.
During chemotherapy, the greenhouse had become the only place in the mansion where she felt normal.
They returned with Naomi.
Bernice was temporarily staying elsewhere on advice of counsel.
Damien entered the greenhouse for the first time in years.
The air smelled of cedar and dry soil.
Along the back wall stood a narrow blue-painted cabinet.
His heart began pounding.
He inserted the key.
The lock clicked.
Inside was not money.
Not jewelry.
Not a stack of dramatic confessions.
There was a flash drive.
A ledger.
And one sealed envelope.
DAMIEN
His hands shook opening it.
Elise’s handwriting filled three pages.
He read silently at first.
Then stopped at the second paragraph.
Naomi watched him.
“What?”
Damien read aloud.
“‘If you are reading this, then Bernice finally went looking for the key.’”
Sofia covered her mouth.
Damien continued.
“‘She will tell you I hated her. I didn’t. I was afraid of what she believed she had to protect.’”
He swallowed.
The next sentence was worse.
“‘Northlight is not the real secret. Northlight is where she moved the money after your father discovered what she had done.’”
Naomi leaned forward.
“What did she do?”
Damien read the final line on the page.
His voice almost disappeared.
“‘Ask Bernice why she needed five million dollars before Walter could remove her as trustee.’”
A noise came from behind them.
They turned.
Bernice stood in the greenhouse doorway.
May you like
And for the first time since Damien had known her—
his mother looked afraid.
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