Chương 8
At the end of the second week, he moved his ankle twice.
By the third week, he could feel the edge of a cold pack on most of his right foot.
The left improved more slowly.
There was no miracle.
There was pain.
Nerve pain, Park explained, could arrive as function returned. Adrian compared it to having electrical wire threaded through his bones.
He slept badly.
He became cruel when tired.
He apologized badly.
Once Rachel told him, “You don’t get extra points for saying sorry like you’re firing someone.”
He considered firing her.
Then realized that would prove her point.
The investigation continued around him with the frustrating pace of actual life.
Search warrants produced financial records.
Rusk’s clinic had received consulting payments from one of the vendors under review at Vale Meridian.
The amount was not enormous by Adrian’s standards.
Two hundred eighty thousand dollars over eighteen months.
Enough to matter to Rusk.
Small enough to disappear inside a company where one executive retreat cost more.
Mercer denied knowledge.
His attorney issued a statement describing the payments as legitimate medical consulting unrelated to Adrian’s care.
Adrian read the statement while balancing between parallel bars in the rehabilitation gym.
His knees were locked in braces.
Two therapists stood close enough to catch him.
He was not walking.
He was upright.
That difference mattered.
The first time they raised him fully vertical, his blood pressure dropped and he nearly fainted.
The second time he vomited.
The third time he stood for forty seconds.
He cried afterward.
Not dramatically.
He sat in the chair, turned his face toward the wall, and tried to breathe quietly while Melissa pretended to be fascinated by a cabinet full of resistance bands.
When Adrian finally looked at her, she handed him a towel.
“Don’t say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I was going to ask whether you wanted the blue band or the green one tomorrow.”
He wiped his face.
“Blue.”
“Good choice.”
“It’s a color.”
“Still a choice.”
He threw the towel at her.
This time he hit his target.
Lucy did not return to the mansion.
Naomi quit.
She sent a short email to the household manager explaining that her daughter no longer felt comfortable there.
Adrian read it twice.
Then he called.
Naomi did not answer.
He left no message.
The next day Lucy mailed him a card.
The front had a cartoon frog in a crown.
Inside, in large uneven letters, she had written:
ARE YOUR TOES STILL DOING IT?
Adrian laughed so loudly Harrison came into the room.
He showed him.
Harrison sat down.
“Answer her.”
“What do I say?”
“The truth.”
Adrian found a blank card in a desk drawer.
He wrote:
THE RIGHT ONES ARE. THE LEFT ONES ARE LAZY.
He stared at the sentence.
Then added:
YOU WERE BRAVE. YOU ALSO RUINED MY FLOOR.
He crossed out the second sentence.
Harrison took the pen.
“Why?”
“She’ll think I’m serious.”
“You are serious.”
“The floor cost twenty thousand dollars.”
“It survived.”
Adrian rewrote:
THE FLOOR SURVIVED TOO.
Lucy’s next card said:
GOOD. MOM SAID YOU ARE TOO RICH TO CARE ABOUT A FLOOR.
Naomi had written beneath it:
I did not say that.
For a while, those cards were the only part of the investigation Adrian liked.
The board became less pleasant.
Mercer remained chief financial officer while outside counsel reviewed the vendor payments. Several directors urged Adrian not to conflate his medical situation with corporate governance.
One director, an old family friend named William Ashcroft, called him privately.
“You’re emotional.”
Adrian sat in his wheelchair beside the rehabilitation pool.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been through something terrible.”
“Yes.”
“Daniel has run the company competently during your absence.”
“Also yes.”
“Then don’t destroy a man’s career because you need someone to blame.”
Adrian looked through the glass wall at swimmers in the therapy pool.
A teenage boy with one leg was racing an older woman to the ladder.
They were both cheating.
“What would you have me do, Bill?”
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“Evidence.”
Adrian smiled.
“I agree.”
Ashcroft sounded relieved.
“Good.”
“So I’m revoking Daniel’s voting proxy until we have it.”
Silence.
“That will alarm the market.”
“Only if somebody tells the market.”
“The board has disclosure obligations.”
“Then let counsel decide what those are.”
“Adrian.”
“What?”
“You’re not thinking like yourself.”
Adrian looked at his right foot.
It was resting flat on the wheelchair plate.
He lifted the heel perhaps a quarter inch.
Then lowered it.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t been myself for a while.”
He revoked the proxy that afternoon.
Mercer called seven times.
Adrian answered the eighth.
“You’re making a mistake,” Mercer said.
“Possibly.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Use that word like a joke.”
Adrian smiled.
“Everyone else does.”
“You know I had nothing to do with your treatment.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You implied it.”
“When?”
“By stripping my authority the minute investigators start asking about medical consulting.”
Adrian became very still.
He had not mentioned medical consulting.
Neither had the company.
The payment link was under seal.
“Daniel.”
A pause.
“Yes?”
“How do you know investigators are asking about medical consulting?”
Silence.
Longer this time.
Then Mercer said, “My lawyer told me.”
“Which lawyer?”
“You know which lawyer.”
“I know six of your lawyers.”
“Adrian, don’t turn this into—”
“Which lawyer?”
Mercer hung up.
Adrian stared at the phone.
Then called Cho.
She arrived forty minutes later.
She did not look excited when he told her.
“Could be innocent.”
“I hate you.”
“I get that a lot.”
“He knew.”
“He knew something.”
“Enough for a warrant?”
“Maybe.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
“There’s that word.”
Cho stood.
“Keep using it. It may save you from making an accusation you can’t take back.”
“You think I care about Daniel’s feelings?”
“No.”
She put away her notebook.
“I think you’ll care about your own judgment later.”
May you like
The warrant came two days afterward, supported by other evidence Adrian was not permitted to see.
Mercer’s office computers were seized.
