Chapter 6: Whatever You Want
Grant called eleven times before midnight.
I sat in the hotel room with my laptop open and the USB drive plugged in, going through Margaret's files one more time.
Not because I needed to.
I had read them so many times I could have recited the transfer sequences from memory.
I read them because it steadied me.
Because every number on every page was proof that I was not imagining things, had never been imagining things, and that the eight years I had spent telling myself Grant's coldness was stress, his secrecy was pressure, his cruelty was occasional — all of it was something I could now put a number on.
$63.4 million.
Moved in forty-eight hours.
But that was only the most recent movement.
Margaret's files went back four years.
The total was closer to $200 million.
At 12:17 a.m., Grant stopped calling and sent a text.
*I know you're at the Meridian.
Room 412.
Come downstairs.
We need to talk like adults.*
I stared at the message.
He knew which hotel.
He knew the room number.
I called the front desk.
"This is room 412.
I need to know if anyone has been asking about my reservation."
A pause.
"One moment, Ms.
Crane." Another pause.
"A gentleman called approximately forty minutes ago.
He identified himself as your husband."
"What did you tell him?"
"I'm afraid I confirmed your room number.
I apologize — he said it was a family emergency —"
I hung up.
I unplugged the USB drive.
I put my laptop in my bag.
I was in the elevator before I finished buttoning my coat.
Grant was in the lobby.
He was alone.
No Richard, no Thomas, no security.
Just Grant in his dinner jacket, standing near the entrance with his hands in his pockets, looking like a man who had never thrown anything in his life.
"Olivia." He stepped toward me.
"Don't." I stopped six feet from him.
"Say what you came to say."
He looked around the lobby.
A night clerk behind the desk.
A couple near the bar.
He lowered his voice.
"I made a mistake tonight."
"Which one?"
"All of it." He exhaled.
"The plate.
The money.
The way I spoke to you.
I panicked, and I handled it badly, and I know that."
"You moved $63.4 million two days ago and threw a plate at my head to celebrate.
That's not panic, Grant.
That was a plan."
"It was a precaution.
The accounts needed to be restructured —"
"Stop." I looked at him.
"I have Margaret's files."
His jaw tightened.
"Margaret was a disgruntled employee who —"
"She kept four years of records.
Transfer logs.
Internal authorization memos.
Emails between you and Richard about the offshore structures.
Emails between you and your mother about which accounts to move first if anyone started asking questions." I paused.
"She kept everything, Grant.
She kept it because she knew that one day you would do to her what you've done to everyone else.
She just decided to give it to me first."
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "What do you want?"
"I want you to go home."
"Olivia —"
"I want you to go home, and I want you to tell your mother that it's over.
And tomorrow morning I am going to walk into a federal building and hand over everything Margaret gave me, and everything I have spent the last eleven months documenting myself." I picked up my bag.
"And then I am going to let the people whose job it is to deal with this do their job."
His face changed.
The careful, apologetic mask slipped.
"You do this," he said, "and you lose everything.
The house.
The accounts.
The life you have.
Everything connected to the Blackwood name gets frozen the moment you walk into that building, and you will spend the next three years fighting lawyers while I —"
"While you what?" I said.
"While you run?"
He stopped.
"Because that's the only move you have left," I said.
"And I think you know that."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Something moved across his face that I had not seen before.
Not anger.
Not calculation.
It was the look of a man who had just understood that the thing he thought was his greatest advantage — that I loved him, that I would protect the life we had built, that I would choose comfort over truth — had never been an advantage at all.
"I did love you," he said.
"At the beginning."
"I know," I said.
"That's the worst part."
I walked past him to the elevator.
He didn't follow.
When the doors closed, I leaned against the back wall and let out one long, slow breath.
My phone buzzed.
Reeves.
*Change hotels tonight.
Don't use a card connected to the Blackwood accounts.
Call me when you're settled.*
I changed hotels.
May you like
I didn't sleep.
But I kept the USB drive against my chest all night, and by the time the sky went gray outside the window, I was ready.
