Chapter 6 - The Boardroom Execution
I was wearing a tailored ivory wool suit that had belonged to my mother, cinched at the waist, with my grandmother’s diamond-and-sapphire brooch pinned to the lapel. My hair was pulled back into a sleek, low chignon.
I looked Grant dead in the eye as he stumbled into the room.
He stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. For five seconds, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the HVAC system.
"Eleanor?" he breathed.
"Sit down, Grant," I said. My voice did not shake. It was perfectly level, carry-weight and calm. "You have twenty minutes before the Southern District closes for the day."
He looked around the table, his eyes darting frantically from Arthur Sterling to Samuel Whitmore.
"Arthur," Grant stammered, pulling out a chair at the opposite end of the table. "What is this? Why aren't we in your office? What is she doing here?"
Arthur Sterling did not look up from his legal pad. "Grant, I suggest you listen very carefully to Mrs. Mercer. My firm no longer represents Mercer Logistics. We have a non-waivable conflict of interest."
"A conflict?!" Grant yelled, slamming both hands down on the table. "I’ve paid you three hundred thousand dollars this year alone!"
"With money drawn from a credit line issued by Hayes Maritime Trust," Samuel Whitmore said dryly. "Which means, Mr. Mercer, you were paying Arthur with his former employer's money. We have already terminated his retainer."
Grant’s face went entirely white. He turned to me, his chest heaving under his wrinkled shirt.
"Eleanor... Elly, listen to me," he started, his voice dropping into that wheedling, intimate tone he used whenever he had forgotten an anniversary or stayed out until four in the morning. "This has gone too far. You’ve made your point. You were angry about Tessa. I understand that. I was stupid. I was under enormous stress with the Apex round, and she was... she was a distraction. A mistake."
Down on the street, the woman he had called his "frequency" four hours ago was sitting in a Starbucks with three bags of dirty laundry.
"A mistake?" I asked, tilting my head. "You brought her into my home, Grant. You allowed her to wear my grandmother’s sweater. You told me that I was unstable, that you would take my child from me, and that I had brought nothing into our lives."
"I was angry!" he pleaded, taking two steps toward me before Samuel raised a hand, causing two private security officers to step silently out from the corners of the room. Grant froze. "You know how I get when I'm backed into a corner! I didn't mean it! Look at us, Elly. Seven years. We built an empire together!"
"You didn't build an empire, Grant," I said. I opened the black leather binder in front of me. "You were an employee who mistook the keys he was handed for ownership."
Sarah Lin slid a four-inch thick document across the polished wood toward him.
"This is the forensic audit of Mercer Logistics for the fiscal years 2021 through 2024," I said. "Would you like me to read the highlights?"
Grant didn't touch the binder. He stood there, trembling.
"You embezzled four point two million dollars from corporate operational reserves," I said, reciting the figures from memory. "You transferred two point eight million of that into an account in the Cayman Islands under the name of 'Vale Media Enterprises.' You bought a four-hundred-thousand-dollar yacht registered in Nassau, which you listed on your corporate tax returns as a maritime transport vessel."
"That was for client entertainment!" Grant gasped.
"The only person entertained on that boat was Tessa Vale," Sarah Lin interjected without looking up from her screen. "We have the charter logs, the fuel receipts, and seventy-four geotagged photos Miss Vale uploaded to her public Instagram profile from the master cabin."
Grant looked like he was about to vomit.
"That constitutes grand larceny in the first degree, securities fraud, and federal tax evasion," Samuel Whitmore said. "The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has already received a preliminary referral. They are currently reviewing the unsealed indictments."
Grant dropped to his knees.
The sound of his knees hitting the hardwood was heavy, pathetic, and real.
"Eleanor," he wept, tears finally spilling down his unshaven cheeks. "Please. Think of the baby. You can't send your baby’s father to federal prison! What will people say? What will our child think?!"
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the table.
May you like
"My child will know that their mother survived a thief," I said. "And as for what people will say? You won't be around to hear it."
***
