Chương 4
Then Graham's office arranged a call with a doctor.
Premature delivery.
Severe complications.
None survived.
Claire did not want to speak to him.
His father told him to leave her alone.
Adrian had.
That was the part nobody had needed to force him to do.
He had been thirty and frightened and exhausted and drinking too much bourbon in hotel rooms. He had accepted silence because silence kept him from discovering how much Claire blamed him.
For six years he had called that respect.
Now it looked suspiciously like cowardice.
Adrian turned to Martin.
"Get Dana Pierce here."
Graham scoffed.
"Your lawyer?"
"My lawyer."
"Adrian."
"And call the state police."
Claire said, "Wait."
Adrian looked at her.
Graham looked relieved for exactly the wrong reason.
Claire saw it too.
"I'm not protecting him," she said. "I'm protecting the boys from whatever happens if you turn tonight into an arrest scene."
"There should be an arrest scene."
"You don't even know what crime happened."
"I know someone lied to me about four dead children."
"And you're furious."
"Yes."
"That isn't evidence."
Adrian stared at her.
Claire's voice shook once, then steadied.
"You want to protect them? Start by not making the first night they meet you the night they watch their grandfather get dragged through a hallway in handcuffs."
Graham said, "Claire, spare us the moral—"
She spun toward him.
"Shut up."
Silence.
Adrian had never heard her speak to Graham that way.
Neither had Graham.
Claire pressed her lips together, almost startled by herself.
Martin looked at Adrian.
"Do I make the call?"
Adrian wanted to say yes.
He imagined the police arriving through the front drive while reporters were still outside. Phones rising. Graham's face. Claire's face. Four boys hearing strangers shout their father's name before they had decided whether they liked him.
"No."
Graham exhaled.
Adrian pointed at him.
"Don't mistake that for mercy."
Then to Martin: "Nobody destroys a document tonight. No office staff gets called. No one goes into the family archives without Dana present."
Graham laughed quietly.
"You don't have authority over my office."
"I own the building your office is in."
"You own forty-one percent of the company that owns the building."
"Then I'll start with the security footage."
Graham's expression changed.
Adrian saw it.
Another clue.
Small.
Real.
"Martin," Adrian said, "preserve every camera log, access record, and guest entry from tonight. And call IT. Legal hold on my accounts and the family-office archive."
Graham stepped forward.
"You will do no such thing."
Adrian turned.
There were moments in his life when his father's size had seemed physical even when they were the same height.
This was not one of them.
"Watch me."
Dana Pierce arrived at 11:18.
By then the mansion was quiet.
The last guests had departed. Graham had not been detained, but after Dana spoke with him for four minutes in the foyer, he left without his usual driver because Martin had found the car's right rear tire mysteriously flat.
Adrian did not ask whether Martin had arranged that.
Martin did not volunteer.
The boys had fallen asleep upstairs in a guest room with two beds pushed together and a mattress brought in from another room. Nina refused to separate them.
Claire sat at the kitchen table in bare feet, her heels abandoned beneath a chair.
Dana entered carrying a laptop bag and wearing jeans, a navy blazer, and the expression of a woman who had been called away from a movie she preferred to billionaire family crimes.
She read the DNA reports twice.
"Private lab."
"Are they real?"
"They look real. That's not the same question."
Adrian folded his arms.
"They're my sons."
"Probably."
"They have my name on their birth bands."
"That's emotionally compelling and legally useless."
Claire stared at the table.
Adrian said, "You could try sounding human."
Dana looked at him.
"I am. That's why I'm telling you not to make permanent decisions at midnight based on four pieces of paper you have not authenticated."
She turned to Claire.
"Start talking."
Claire asked for water.
Adrian almost laughed at the normality of it.
Nina poured her a glass.
Claire drank half before speaking.
"Six years ago, Adrian and I were engaged."
Dana nodded.
"I know."
"We were trying to have a baby. There were fertility treatments. More than one embryo implanted."
Adrian stared at the floor.
He did not need the details.
He remembered the positive test.
Claire laughing in the bathroom of their Boston apartment because the first test had been faint and Adrian had bought seven more from a pharmacy.
He remembered sitting on the tile while she took them.
Seven plastic sticks lined up beside a toothbrush cup.
He had forgotten that part.
Or buried it.
Claire continued.
"At twelve weeks we learned there were four."
Nina looked at her.
Even Nina did not know everything.
"Graham hated it."
Dana asked, "The pregnancy?"
"The risk. The attention. The timing. All of it."
Adrian said, "He wanted reduction."
Claire looked at him.
"You agreed with him."
"I was scared."
"You agreed."
"I said we should listen to the doctors."
"You said four babies could destroy our lives."
Adrian's jaw tightened.
"I said we didn't know how to raise four babies."
"That's not what you said."
Nina looked between them.
Dana said, "We can litigate the relationship later. What happened?"
Claire took another drink.
"The pregnancy got complicated. I moved in with Rebecca for a while. Adrian left for Singapore."
Adrian looked away.
"Your father contacted me."
"How?"
"He came to Rebecca's house."
That surprised him.
Graham had told Adrian he had not spoken to Claire directly.
"He said Adrian was unstable. Drinking. Taking pills."
Dana looked at Adrian.
He said, "Sleeping pills. Prescribed."
Claire said nothing.
Adrian added, "And drinking."
Dana waited.
"Too much."
Claire nodded once.
"Graham had photographs. Hotel bills. A video from an elevator where Adrian could barely stand."
Adrian remembered the elevator.
May you like
Unfortunately.
A week after his mother's memorial, months before Claire became pregnant.
