Chapter 6: What Greer Was Protecting
The answer came at 2 a.m., from a woman I had never met.
Her name was Claire Ashworth.
She called Vincent's secure line, not mine.
She said she had been waiting to make this call for three months and that tonight's news — apparently word traveled fast even at that hour — had made waiting impossible.
Vincent brought me the phone in the corridor outside Ethan's room, where my son had finally fallen asleep on the small couch with a blanket pulled up to his chin and Lily curled beside him like a comma, still in her white sneakers.
"Ms.
Ashworth," I said.
"Mr.
Moretti." Her voice was steady and precise — the voice of someone who had rehearsed this.
"I'm a forensic accountant.
Until fourteen months ago I worked for Greer's firm.
I left because of what I found."
"Tell me."
"Senator Greer has been using a network of discretionary trusts — trusts like the one your son's estate is structured through — to move money for a pharmaceutical client.
The client is a company called Vantara Group.
They've been funding research that isn't approved and isn't legal, and they've been hiding the funding inside legitimate estate accounts for seven years."
Seven years.
Since just after Elena died.
"Why my son's trust specifically?" I asked.
"Because your wife's estate was large, the secondary account was loosely monitored, and Marcus Hale was willing." She paused.
"But the more important reason is that Vantara Group has been trying to acquire a specific set of patents.
Patents that your company holds through a subsidiary.
They've been trying to get access to your board for two years.
Greer told them the fastest path was through the trust — through Ethan's inheritance — because whoever controlled the trust controlled the subsidiary votes until your son came of age."
I stood very still in the corridor.
"They weren't trying to h*rm Ethan," I said.
"No," she said.
"They were trying to remove you.
Ethan getting sick — seriously sick — would have triggered the estate's emergency provisions.
Control of the trust would have shifted to the co-trustee panel.
Marcus was on that panel.
Greer's firm administered it.
Vantara would have had their votes within sixty days."
Forty million in shipping contracts.
That had been Marcus's piece.
The patents — worth considerably more — had been Greer's.
"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked.
A brief silence.
"Because I have a daughter," she said.
"She's five.
And when I heard that a three-year-old girl stopped something terrible from happening to an eight-year-old boy, I decided I was done waiting for the right moment."
I looked through the half-open door at Ethan sleeping.
At Lily's untied white sneaker hanging off the edge of the couch.
"Ms.
Ashworth," I said.
"I need everything you have.
Every document, every transfer record, every communication."
"I have it all," she said.
"I've had it for fourteen months.
I just needed someone to give it to."
"Can you be in New York tomorrow?"
"I'm already here," she said.
"I've been here for a week."
I handed the phone back to Vincent.
He looked at me.
"Vantara Group," I said.
"I want everything.
Corporate structure, board members, research filings, patent applications.
Everything."
"Tonight?"
"Start now."
He nodded and moved down the corridor.
I went back into the room and sat in the chair beside the couch.
Ethan didn't wake up.
His breathing was slow and even.
One hand was loosely curled near his face, the same way it had been since he was an infant — Elena had photographed it a hundred times, that small curled hand.
Lily shifted in her sleep and made a sound that was almost a word but wasn't.
I sat there in the green light from the reading lamp and thought about seven years.
Seven years of building, protecting, watching, working.
Seven years of believing that the danger to my son came from rivals, from competitors, from the ordinary enemies that a man in my position accumulated.
It had never occurred to me that the danger had been growing inside the trust that bore Elena's name.
In the morning, I would call my attorney.
I would call the federal investigators.
I would give them Claire Ashworth's number and everything Vincent had pulled through the night.
But right now, in this room, with my son sleeping three feet away and a three-year-old girl's untied sneaker hanging off the edge of the couch, I let myself feel something I very rarely allowed.
I was afraid of how close it had been.
One bite.
Seconds.
Ethan stirred.
His eyes opened halfway.
He looked at me without surprise — as if he had known I was there.
"Dad."
"Go back to sleep."
"Did you figure it out?"
"Most of it."
He considered this.
"Is it over?"
I looked at him.
"Not yet," I said.
"But it will be."
He closed his eyes.
I stayed in the chair until his breathing slowed again.
And then my phone lit up on the side table — a message from Vincent.
*Vantara Group.
Board of directors.
Third name on the list.*
I picked up the phone.
May you like
The third name was someone I had shaken hands with in this very house, not four hours ago.
Someone who had not yet been asked to leave.
