Chương 8
“I’m trying not to say things that make you hate me more.”
“That’s considerate.”
“I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“Being the person who should apologize.”
Victoria leaned against a temporary railing.
Below, the Newport site buzzed with construction noise.
“Then don’t apologize.”
Sienna went quiet.
“Why are you calling?”
“Because Ethan asked me to delete things.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
Victoria straightened.
“How?”
“He came to my apartment.”
“Did you let him in?”
“No.”
“Did he threaten you?”
A pause.
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
“He said if Alder gets investigated, I’m the one whose name is on it.”
Victoria said nothing.
Sienna’s voice lost some of its polish.
“He’s right.”
“Yes.”
“I need a lawyer.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might tell me which kind.”
Victoria almost laughed.
“You want legal advice from me?”
“No. I want the name of somebody who won’t quietly call Ethan first.”
Victoria looked through the unfinished opening where windows would eventually be installed.
The Atlantic was visible beyond the site.
“You should find your own attorney.”
“I expected that.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to cooperate.”
“With me?”
“With whoever asks.”
“Why?”
Sienna took too long to answer.
“Because I don’t want to go to prison over a man who brings his own pillow to hotels.”
Victoria blinked.
“What?”
“He hates hotel pillows.”
“I know.”
“I figured.”
The laugh escaped Victoria before she could stop it.
Small.
Ugly.
Immediate guilt followed.
Sienna laughed too, once.
Then both women went silent.
Victoria rubbed her forehead.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“I still hate you.”
“I know.”
“I may hate you more because that was funny.”
“Fair.”
Victoria ended the call.
That afternoon, she told estate counsel about Ethan’s attempt to contact Sienna.
The information went to investigators.
Nobody rushed to arrest him.
Again, reality moved more slowly than anger.
The brooch had been taken for authentication. Cemetery access records were subpoenaed. The maintenance contractor’s invoices were examined. Digital entry logs from the mausoleum service gate existed, but they showed only vehicle credentials, not who had physically entered the crypt.
The contractor initially claimed ordinary maintenance.
Then his attorney stopped him from speaking voluntarily.
Victoria wanted someone to kick down a door.
Instead, she received calendar invitations.
A week later, the family estate petitioned the probate court for expanded preservation orders.
Another week passed.
Ethan moved out of their Manhattan apartment after Victoria’s lawyers sent notice that household property would be inventoried.
He took clothing, toiletries, two personal computers, and a coffee grinder he insisted had been his before the marriage.
Victoria nearly fought him over the grinder.
Not because she wanted it.
Because he wanted it.
Her attorney advised against turning minor personal property into a separate dispute.
Victoria stood in the kitchen after Ethan left and stared at the empty space on the counter.
For eight years, she had hated that grinder.
It scattered grounds everywhere.
Now the absence of it felt insulting.
She bought another one the next morning.
The new machine was quieter.
She disliked it immediately.
The marriage became public before the criminal investigation did.
A photograph from the yacht surfaced online showing Ethan standing beside Sienna.
The brooch was visible if someone zoomed in.
Nobody knew what it meant.
Most coverage treated the story as a wealthy-marriage scandal.
Victoria’s name trended for half a day.
Strangers called her cold.
Others called her humiliated.
One post praised her trousers.
Another claimed Sienna was prettier.
Victoria read too much of it at two in the morning.
Then she threw her phone onto the bed and immediately picked it up again to make sure the screen had not cracked.
The next morning, Mercer’s communications team asked whether she wanted to issue a statement.
She declined.
Public silence did not feel dignified.
It felt like having tape over her mouth.
But she had begun to understand that not every pain improved when expressed.
Ethan issued his own statement through a representative.
It described the marital situation as private and denied wrongdoing related to Mercer Holdings or the Eleanor Mercer estate.
Victoria read the sentence three times.
Wrongdoing related to.
Not wrongdoing.
Related to.
She forwarded it to counsel with one line:
He wrote this himself.
The reply came back:
We think so too.
Forensic accountants found the next clue in an insurance certificate.
One painting from Eleanor’s estate had been appraised for collateral at a value almost forty percent above the estate inventory figure.
The appraiser had been introduced through Alder Maritime Capital.
The painting itself had never left secured storage.
On paper, that looked less like theft than aggressive financing.
Then investigators compared photographs.
The appraisal image was not of the estate painting.
It was a near-identical work by the same artist held in a private collection.
Someone had substituted the photograph.
That mattered because the estate painting had a conservation mark on the lower frame.
Victoria recognized its absence before the experts did.
She was sitting in a conference room when the image appeared on a screen.
“That’s not ours.”
Three people looked at her.
The attorney asked how she knew.
Victoria pointed.
“My mother dropped it during a move in 2009. There’s a repair here.”
She indicated the bottom left corner.
The digital image showed smooth wood.
For the first time in weeks, her habit of noticing objects did not feel like a weakness Ethan had exploited.
It felt useful.
The substitution led to emails.
The emails led to a lender.
The lender led to an account.
Alder Maritime had received an arrangement fee of $410,000 from a financing vehicle connected to the pledged assets.
Of that amount, $300,000 had been transferred into an investment account controlled indirectly by Ethan.
The explanation that he had been acting only to protect Mercer became harder to sustain.
Victoria received the summary on a Thursday evening.
She was at the Mercer house alone.
Rain moved against the windows.
May you like
She opened a bottle of wine, poured half a glass, then forgot to drink it.
At 7:08 p.m., Ethan arrived at the gate.
