Chương 10
A sound escaped Marcus before he recognized it as a laugh.
Zion lifted his head.
Marcus sat on the edge of the bed and covered his face with both hands.
Janice’s voice softened.
“Come here.”
She showed him how to support Zion’s weight without holding him too tightly. Marcus placed the baby against his shoulder. Zion fussed, then rested his cheek near Marcus’s collar.
“You don’t have to prove you deserve him every minute,” Janice said.
Marcus looked toward the window.
“Don’t I?”
“No. But you have to keep showing up.”
Two weeks into the investigation, Detective Price asked Emily to accompany officers to the estate and identify where she had seen the discarded treatment cloth.
The house looked smaller with evidence tape across the doors.
Most of the staff had been sent home on paid leave. Dust had formed along the edge of the entry table. Several vases stood empty because no one had replaced the flowers.
Emily entered through the service corridor.
Her old locker remained open. Inside were a spare cardigan, pain relievers, and a paperback mystery novel with forty pages left. She put the book in her bag.
Detective Price led her upstairs.
The nursery smelled faintly of disinfectant. The crib had been removed for testing. Pale rectangles on the rug showed where furniture had stood.
Emily pointed to the trash can and the baseboard.
A forensic technician photographed both.
On the changing table, someone had left a silver picture frame facedown. Emily lifted it before Price could stop her.
Rachel Whitaker smiled from the photograph, visibly pregnant, one hand on Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus looked younger without the beard. He was not smiling at the camera. He was looking at Rachel.
Emily set the frame upright.
Price watched her.
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
“Margaret did.”
“I know.”
They moved into the hallway.
At the top of the service stairs, Emily saw a narrow door she had never noticed open before. Inside was a supply room lined with binders.
“Has this been searched?” she asked.
Price looked at the evidence seal.
“Yes.”
“Then why is the seal cut?”
The detective stepped closer.
A clean slice ran through the tape near the latch.
Price called downstairs.
Officers searched the room again. Nothing obvious was missing, but one shelf contained household incident reports arranged by year. The current binder had no pages after January.
Emily remembered filling out a report in March when a delivery driver slipped near the kitchen entrance.
“That should be there,” she said.
Price photographed the empty rings.
“Who maintained these?”
“Anthony’s assistant. But Margaret had a key.”
“Anyone else?”
“Marcus, I suppose.”
“Did you ever see him in here?”
Emily looked around the cramped room.
“No.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
He wore no tie. Zion was not with him.
Detective Price’s expression hardened.
“You were told not to enter secured areas.”
“This property was released to my access this morning.”
“Not this room.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That appears to be a recurring condition.”
Marcus accepted the insult without reacting.
His eyes moved to Emily.
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“Neither did I.”
Price stepped between them.
“Mr. Whitaker, leave.”
Marcus remained still.
“The missing reports,” he said. “Grant told me the police removed them.”
“We did not.”
“I was told you had.”
“By whom?”
“Grant.”
Price pulled out her phone.
Marcus looked at Emily.
“I withdrew the agreement.”
“I know.”
“Your salary should have arrived.”
“It did.”
“I didn’t mean for the conditions to be included.”
“Someone did.”
“I fired Grant.”
Emily studied him.
“That must have been difficult.”
“He has represented me for twelve years.”
“I meant finding a person willing to fire someone for you.”
Marcus flinched.
Detective Price told him again to leave.
He stepped aside, then paused.
“Emily.”
She waited.
“I’m sorry.”
The apology was quieter than she expected.
“For which part?” she asked.
Marcus looked into the supply room—the missing reports, the cut seal, the shelves of records he had never seen.
“I’m beginning to understand that I don’t know.”
“That isn’t the same as being sorry.”
“No.”
He left.
Price closed the door after him.
“You enjoy making powerful men uncomfortable?”
Emily picked up her bag.
“No. I enjoy when discomfort is finally distributed accurately.”
The missing reports altered the investigation.
Grant Bell denied removing them. Anthony’s assistant admitted she had scanned several into a private storage account after being told to clean up the files before the merger dinner. She said Anthony wanted to avoid showing a pattern of household accidents to the company’s insurance auditor.
The scans documented six incidents in eighteen months.
A groundskeeper developed breathing problems after using an unlabeled chemical in the greenhouse. A housekeeper suffered burns from a concentrated cleaner transferred into a decorative glass bottle. A driver crashed after working nineteen hours during a corporate retreat. An electrician warned that nursery wiring had been improperly altered to support additional cameras. His warning was marked “nonurgent” and closed without repair.
Every report had been reviewed by Anthony.
Three had been forwarded to Grant.
None had reached Marcus.
At least, no record showed that they had.
The discovery divided public opinion. Some called Marcus a victim of dishonest employees. Others argued that a man who designed systems for a living could not claim innocence when his own household system concealed injuries.
The company’s stock fell eleven percent in two days.
Vivian Sloane requested Marcus’s resignation as chief executive.
He refused.
Not because he wanted the job. Because the board’s proposed statement blamed “isolated misconduct by domestic employees” and described household operations as separate from company governance.
Marcus read the statement twice in his apartment while Zion slept in a carrier against his chest.
He joined the emergency board meeting by video.
May you like
“The household expenses were processed through the family office and allocated to executive security,” Vivian said. “That was inappropriate, but it does not make the company responsible for criminal conduct by individuals.”
“You knew Grant managed both.”
