Chapter 8: The Brother's Office
Marcus Harrington's firm occupied the top two floors of a glass building in downtown Providence.
Dominic arrived without an appointment.
The receptionist said Mr.
Harrington was in a meeting.
Dominic said he would wait.
He sat in the reception area for eleven minutes.
Then Marcus Harrington appeared in the hallway — not because he had finished his meeting, but because someone had told him who was sitting in his lobby and he had decided that waiting was worse.
Marcus was taller than his sister.
Broader.
He had the same honey-blond coloring, the same careful grooming, and the same quality Brooke had — that surface smoothness that looked like confidence and functioned like armor.
He extended his hand.
Dominic shook it.
"Let's use my office," Marcus said pleasantly.
They went upstairs.
Marcus's office had floor-to-ceiling windows facing the bay.
He gestured to a chair.
Dominic sat.
Marcus sat across from him and folded his hands on the desk.
"I assume this is about Brooke," Marcus said.
"And about the coastal properties."
"I make offers on a lot of properties."
"Three offers on Mercer holdings.
Three different holding companies.
All declined." Dominic set a folder on the desk.
"And a plan, developed over the last eight months, to use your sister's engagement to gain legal access to the family trust and force a sale."
Marcus looked at the folder.
He didn't open it.
"That's a significant accusation."
"It's a documented sequence of events." Dominic opened the folder himself and turned it toward Marcus.
"Richard Hale's disclosure.
The amendment reversal.
Gerald Foss's billing records, which my attorney subpoenaed this morning.
And three months of your sister's communications with Natalie Mercer, which Natalie has agreed to provide in full."
Marcus looked at the documents.
His expression didn't change — but his stillness changed.
It became the stillness of a man calculating, not the stillness of a man who has nothing to hide.
"Brooke acted independently," he said.
"She acted with your knowledge and your financial backing.
The Harrington Group was going to retain Richard Hale at two hundred thousand annually once the acquisition went through.
That's not a coincidence.
That's a payment."
"You can't prove I directed her."
"I can prove you benefited.
I can prove your firm's holding companies made coordinated offers timed to coincide with specific moments in the estate's legal vulnerability — moments that only existed because of what Brooke was doing inside my household." Dominic leaned forward slightly.
"Marcus.
I'm not a prosecutor.
I'm not here to send you to prison.
I'm here to tell you directly, one time, what happens next."
Marcus waited.
"You are going to withdraw every outstanding offer on Mercer properties.
Every holding company, every intermediary.
Withdrawn, in writing, by end of business Friday." Dominic closed the folder.
"You are going to have no further contact with Richard Hale.
You are going to have no further contact with anyone connected to my family's legal or financial affairs."
"And if I don't?"
"Then the full documentation goes to the state attorney general's office, the bar association, and three financial journalists who have been very interested in the Harrington Group's acquisition practices for the last eighteen months." Dominic stood up.
"I'm told two of them already have sources inside your firm."
Marcus's hands unfolded on the desk.
"You'd burn a lot of goodwill doing that," he said.
"People in this city—"
"I don't need goodwill from people in this city." Dominic picked up the folder.
"I need my nephew to grow up in his grandmother's cottage.
Everything else is secondary."
He walked to the door.
"Dominic."
He stopped.
"Brooke genuinely cared for you," Marcus said.
"In the beginning.
Before it became about the properties."
Dominic looked back at him.
"That," he said, "is the saddest part of all of this."
He left.
In the elevator going down, his phone buzzed.
A message from Emma.
*Brooke called the house.
She wants to speak with you.
She says she can explain.*
He looked at the message for a moment.
May you like
Then he put his phone in his pocket and walked out into the gray Providence morning.
He didn't call back.
