Deception

  “If someone involved in this agreement does anything to persuade the outcome—” I tried to paraphrase.

  “Sorry, ma’am, it specifically states that if anyone does anything to dissuade, to interfere with the natural progression of, or to stop the planned arrangement, then that person null and voids his or her assets or any claim to said assets.”

  “What about this?” I asked as I pointed.

  “In the event that the marriage doesn’t go as planned, Montague Corporation will remain a viable entity; however, the current board of trustees will be dissolved, and the entire corporate structure will become a publicly traded company.”

  “But the original article stated it would be sold and the proceeds would go to Fitzgerald Investments?”

  “Adelaide, that’s what a codicil does, it allows people to change their minds.”

  “What about the assets?”

  Stephen shook his head. “If the marriage doesn’t occur, or either person marries someone else, your father’s last will and testament will enter probate again where all interested parties must make a case for their rights. Assuming that the earlier mentioned interference isn’t an issue, theoretically, the estate will be equally divided amongst the living heirs.”

  “This has been present for fifteen years and it’s the first time I’m seeing it? Why is that?”

  “I don’t have an answer for you. I can tell you that after the addition of the codicil and apparently your father’s death, there was an attempt to revoke the codicil, to make it null and void. The presiding judge refused to remove it.”

  I didn’t need to ask who had made that attempt.

  I removed my phone from my purse and turned on my camera. Page by page, I photographed Article XII as well as the codicils. When I was done, I said, “Stephen, thank you. Let me help you put this all back in the box. Would it be possible to forget to log what we saw into that catalog?”

  He shook his head.

  “I understand. Then could it simply say that we explored the contents of the documents with no specifics?”

  His expression blossomed. “That space for content is too small to describe all that we did.”

  “And who’s made aware of that catalog?” I asked.

  “Only people who seek the information. It isn’t automatically given to anyone.” He shrugged. “If it were, you’d be on that list.”

  That was true.

  “Thank you again,” I said. “I’d be happy to buy you a drink. You are old enough to drink, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and after today, I’d like a drink.”

  “Me too, Stephen. I feel like celebrating.”

  “TELL ME WHERE you are,” Alton’s booming voice demanded.

  I wasn’t born yesterday. If my GPS worked for Nox, it also worked for Alton. “Let me talk to my mother, or I’m hanging up.”

  “I didn’t realize that Columbia had a satellite campus in Rye.” He said the word like it was a backwoods Georgia dot on the map, not one of the nicest, most expensive zip codes in New York.

  Asshole.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Well, obviously, this law school farce didn’t last long. Second day and you’re already skipping class.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Before I could disconnect the line, my mother’s voice came through the cell phone. “Alexandria, are you all right?”

  “Yes, Mother, I’m fine.”

  “Tell us what happened.”

  Nox had told me not to talk to anyone about this morning until I heard from Deloris. Did that include my family? “I really don’t know.” It was mostly true. The scene was a blur.

  “Bullshit!” Alton’s voice boomed from the background, turning my stomach and setting my teeth on edge.

  “Speakerphone? Really, Mother?” I wondered if they were in his office at that damn ostentatious conference table. Were we now doing long-distance family discipline sessions? Soon it would be time to talk about how once again I’d disappointed my family and sullied the Montague name.

  “Dear, your father is worried sick. You were involved in a shooting! Your face was on the news. Do you have any idea of the repercussions to Montague Corporation?”

  Yep, there it is!

  So many issues—number one, he’s not my father! Number two, I was shot at and Montague Corporation is the biggest concern?

  “I wasn’t involved. It happened. We left. I don’t know more.”

  “But you’re not at class?”

  “No, I’m not. The shooting interrupted my schedule.”

  “You’re coming home,” Alton’s voice again demanded. “Why the hell are you in Rye when you should be here?”

  I shook my head. “Why should I be there?”

  “Dear,” my mother tried to explain, “obviously, there’s danger. It’s that young man.”

  “Just like his father,” Alton added.

  Continuing as if Alton hadn’t spoken, my mother went on, “You need to be safe. From what I saw on the news, you’re not. I love you, Alexandria. I want to know you’re safe.”

  “Momma, when you can call and talk to me without your husband in the background, we can discuss it. You know my number.”

  “He’s right, dear. Why Rye?”

  That was it. I was turning off the damn GPS. I’d tell Deloris, Jerrod, and Nox. As long as I was here, I didn’t need to broadcast it to the world.

  I took a deep breath. “Rye is where…” I stopped talking as Deloris entered the room, her head moving from side to side and her lips puckered in the universal ‘shh’ sign.

  “Who is that?” she whispered.

  I covered the mouthpiece of my phone. “My… parents.” I hated that description, but it was a shorter explanation. “They saw the video.”

  “Of course they did. It’s had over half a million hits.”

  “Who are you talking to?” my mother asked.

  “Mom, I need to go. I’m fine—completely fine. I’ll call you later when you can talk.”

  “Alexandria, your father is insistent about sending the plane. He’s looking it up right now. There’s a private airport not far from where you are…”

  My eyes opened wide toward Deloris. I knew she could hear as she continued to shake her head back and forth.

  “Don’t send a plane,” I said. “I’m fine. I’ll be back to class tomorrow. Savannah really doesn’t fit into my schedule.”

  This time it was my mother who covered the mouthpiece. Behind the muffling of her hand, I could hear hers and Alton’s voices though I couldn’t make out their words.

  “Alex, hang up,” Deloris said.

  I shrugged. “I’ve tried.”

  She reached for the phone. Before I realized what she’d done, she hit the disconnect button. “Yes,” she confirmed with her ear to the phone. “It wasn’t difficult. The button worked.”

  What the hell?

  “That was my mother, and what you just did was rude.”

  “It may have been rude, but after what I just learned, it was warranted.”

  “Is it…?” My stomach dropped. Anger at her behavior immediately turned to panic. “…Nox? Oh my God, is he… did something happen?”

  She reached for my hand. “Come, let’s sit.”

  My flat shoes that I’d found near the sofa in the pool house held tightly to the wooden floor, keeping me steadfast. “Tell me, Deloris.”

  She shook her head as she tugged my hand. “It’s not Lennox. He’s in flight. He’s fine. It’s about the letter.”

  I followed her to one of the long sofas. After we sat, I asked, “What about the letter?”

  “Think carefully. Who touched it?”

  I tried to recall. It seemed like weeks or even months ago, not last night. I remembered going into my new office, seeing it sitting on my desk, and picking it up. Nox took it from my hands, and then Deloris handled it with a tissue. “Me, Nox, and then you.”

  “What about the envelope?”

  I shru
gged. “Me. I don’t even think Nox touched it. I was the one to open it. He grabbed the pages from me, but the envelope… I don’t remember if I threw it away or left it on the desk.”

  “It was on the desk,” she confirmed.

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s a partial print on the envelope. The letter itself has your prints and Lennox’s. The other prints are being verified. So far Mr. Spencer’s prints have not been detected.”

  My eyes grew wide. “What?”

  “I’ve alerted Lennox, but I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

  My head moved from side to side. “Maybe Bryce wore gloves or something.”

  “Why would he wear gloves and sign his name?”

  I don’t know.

  “D-do you have it, or even a copy?” I asked. “Maybe if I looked at it again, I could tell if it was really his signature.”

  “I didn’t bring it with me, but I have a picture.” Deloris reached into her bag and pulled out her tablet. As it came to life, she said, “The only other prints on the paper were not in our system, but I found the possible match in a database of employees.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “Demetri Enterprise employees?” I asked.

  “No, Infidelity.”

  I gasped.

  “Do you recognize the name Whitney Blessings?” Deloris asked.

  I shook my head. “Karen said we wouldn’t know any of the other employees.”

  “You wouldn’t know her from Infidelity. You might know her because of where she works—her main job,” she qualified.

  “Why? Where does she work?”

  “Montague Corporation. She’s your father’s—I mean your stepfather’s—secretary. Personal assistant. Her job description isn’t very specific.”

  My stomach twisted. What did this mean? Was Alton an Infidelity client?

  “That doesn’t make sense. I mean I’ve known forever that he screwed around on my mom, but why would he be a client?”

  “Are you saying that he’s such a charismatic charmer that paying for companionship would be beneath him?”

  I scrunched my nose as bile bubbled from the pits of my empty stomach.

  Gross!

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I-I just never imagined he’d be a client.”

  “I didn’t say he was. I said his assistant is an employee, and I believe she touched the letter—more accurately the paper—possibly long before the words were written and it became a letter. This theory leads me to believe that the paper at the very least came from your stepfather’s office.”

  I tried to process. “Maybe Bryce got the paper from there. He works at Montague in the corporate offices.”

  “That’s a possibility. But wasn’t your stepfather on that call?” Deloris asked.

  “Yes. He called me on my mother’s phone.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  I shrugged. “Because he knew I wouldn’t have answered if he’d used his own phone.”

  “And he wanted…?” she asked.

  “He said he was sending a plane. He wants me home… to Savannah,” I clarified.

  Deloris’s expression remained blank, neither concerned nor anxious, as if dealing with threatening letters full of Demetri secrets was an everyday occurrence. She turned her attention to her tablet.

  My phone buzzed with a recognizable ring.

  The screen read ALTON.

  Deloris’s green eyes met mine. I’d never looked at their color before. With the sunlight from the windows, flakes of gold and brown shone from their depths. Perhaps she was showing more emotion than usual, though she was much better at hiding it. “Alex, I apologize for cutting your call with your mother short. I’m concerned.”

  My phone rang again.

  “Lennox,” she continued, “has entrusted me with many tasks. Keeping you safe is one of them, one he holds as my greatest priority.”

  Another ring.

  “And him,” I said.

  Deloris nodded. “As you know, that is my number-one priority. I should be with him in DC right now…”

  Ring.

  “If I don’t answer this, it will go to voicemail.”

  She hitched a shoulder. “Would that be bad?”

  “You saw the screen?”

  “I did.”

  My phone vibrated, indicating the call was sent to voicemail.

  Though I had no desire to answer that call or listen to the message, I knew without a doubt I’d pissed Alton off, more than usual. Not only did he think I’d hung up on him but now I’d refused to answer his call.

  “Here,” Deloris said as she pulled up the picture of the letter I’d found. She scrolled to the final page, the one with the signature. It simply read Bryce.

  “You know,” I said, “he goes by different names.”

  Deloris’s eyes opened wider. “That seems to be a trend I’m noticing with both of you.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Touché. But I was never Charli, not until Del Mar. I wasn’t even Alex until Stanford. I was always Alexandria. That was the name on the outside of the envelope. My point is that my cousin, Patrick, knew Bryce… well, forever. He calls him Spence. I’d never thought about it until the other night when Pat was talking about him. Over and over, he referred to him as Spence. Nox knows him, somehow, and calls him Edward.”

  “His first name.”

  “Yes, Edward Bryce Carmichael Spencer.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that only some of us who have known him forever call him Bryce. According to Nox, in business, he goes by Edward.”

  “The letter was signed Bryce.”

  I nodded. “Which is the way he’d sign it if it were from him to me.”

  “You’re saying that others may mistakenly use one of his other names?”

  “Yes. For example, if Nox received a letter from me and it was signed Alexandria, you could assume it wasn’t written by me.”

  “What do your parents call him?”

  The little bit of chicken salad I’d managed to eat hardened in my stomach. “Bryce. It’s what his mother calls him too.”

  “What do you think of the writing?”

  I shrugged. “It’s messy. It’s barely legible and it could be his. It’s been a long time since we passed notes at the academy. I would say it is his writing, but…” My eyes opened wider. “…you could have a handwriting expert look at it.”

  “I could,” Deloris confirmed.

  My phone buzzed again.

  I didn’t need the screen. I knew the tune. “It’s my mother.”

  “Or your stepfather using your mother’s phone.”

  “This is only going to escalate,” I warned. “Trust me. I have experience.”

  Ring.

  “My job is to keep you safe,” Deloris said. “But you’re not a prisoner. Do you want to go to Savannah? Would you feel safer in your home?”

  My home?

  I knew the answer. I knew where I felt the safest, and it was in the arms of the man in DC. I hadn’t considered Montague Manor my home since the day I boarded the plane to Stanford. My home had been with Chelsea, and over the past month, it had been with Nox.

  “No. I trust Nox. He trusts you. I know my stepfather and that isn’t reassuring. I want to assure my mom I’m all right. But I don’t want to leave.”

  Ring.

  She reached toward me. “May I help?”

  Uncertainty flooded my system, testing my last statement, pushing me to my limit. If I handed my phone to Deloris, I was making a big leap of faith, trusting her not only where I was concerned, but also my mother, or God forbid, Alton.

  Ring.

  As I handed her my phone, Deloris nodded, neither appearing happy or discontent with my decision.

  “Hello?” she said.

  I could hear Alton’s voice again.

  “This is Mrs. Witt, Mr. Demetri’s associate…”

  Lifting my glass of iced tea from the t
able, I stood and paced near the windows, listening to both sides of the conversation as Deloris spoke with Alton. I loved her calm. Nothing rattled her, not even a billowing blowhard threatening legal charges.

  “I assure you that Miss Collins, a legal adult, is safe and here of her own free will…”

  I looked around for a clock. What time was it? Was Nox in DC?

  I jumped as a hand touched my shoulder. I turned to the soft brown eyes of Silvia.

  “Alex, Mr. Demetri is on the house line for you.”

  My heart swelled. “Thank God! He probably tried my cell. My parents have had it monopolized.” I tilted my head toward Deloris, still in conversation.

  “No, not Lennox, his father, Oren.”

  “WHAT?” I ASKED Silvia as I tried to comprehend her words. “Nox’s father wants to speak to me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You can take the call in Lennox’s office, if you’d like.” She tilted her head toward Deloris. “It would be more private.”

  More private? I still hadn’t been told the story I was supposed to relay about the shooting. I’d pleaded ignorant with my parents, but if I recalled, Nox had mentioned his father’s name, as if he’d spoken to him since our return to this house. If he had, then undoubtedly, Mr. Demetri knew what had happened.

  I stared for another moment at Deloris, wondering if I should speak to her first.

  “Alex, what would you like me to tell him?” Silvia asked.

  I straightened my shoulders. I wasn’t good at waiting for permission to speak. If Nox had spoken to his father, then I could too. “Please tell him I’ll be right there.” I looked around. “I don’t believe I’ve been to the office. Can you show me?”

  I nodded to Deloris who was still doing her best to reassure my mother of my well-being and followed Silvia from the sitting room. Ironically, I recalled seeing Oren Demetri for the first time in that room, sitting very close to where Deloris now sat.

  The office was as beautiful as the rest of the house. It too was walled with windows: one side looked out to a patio, surrounded by greenery that I remembered led to the pool deck. The other wall of windows looked out to the pool itself, with the sound beyond.

  “How could anyone get work done in here with that amazing view?” I asked as Silvia lifted the phone on the desk.