Chapter 4 - The Panic in Weston
At 7:15 on Sunday morning, the sprawling, four-thousand-square-foot colonial on Orchard Lane in Weston was not a sanctuary of domestic bliss.
It was an echo chamber of hysteria.
Chloe Vance paced the length of the marble kitchen island, wearing a silk dressing gown that dragged against the unpolished floorboards, clutching an unread mug of black coffee with trembling, white-knuckled hands.
Across the room, Marcus Mercer sat slumped in a leather barstool, still wearing his tuxedo trousers and an unbuttoned dress shirt from the night before, his dark hair wild, three empty highball glasses sitting on the counter beside his phone.
"She's married to Julian Rhodes, Marcus!" Chloe shrieked, her voice reaching that high, piercing frequency that had driven his domestic staff crazy for four years. "Do you understand what that means?! Julian Rhodes is the chairman of the trust board! My father’s commercial architecture firm is bidding on their Seaport development next month! If Evelyn tells him—"
"Shut up, Chloe!" Marcus roared, slamming his fist onto the marble with a concussive crack that rattled the espresso machine.
He surged to his feet, his bloodshot eyes bulging with five years of suppressed rage and sudden, catastrophic panic.
"She doesn't know anything about the Seaport!" Marcus yelled, his breath smelling of stale single-malt scotch. "Evelyn is a clerk! She’s an administrative paper-pusher! She doesn't have the stomach for a corporate war! She never had the stomach for it!"
"Then why did Rhodes mention the twenty-twenty-two equipment leases?!" Chloe screamed back, stepping into his face, her crimson lips trembling with terror. "Why did he name the Delaware subsidiaries?! Marcus, I signed those incorporation documents! You told me it was just a tax optimization strategy! You swore to me that the banks would never look at the second schedule!"
Marcus grabbed his hair with both hands, pacing toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over his manicured two-acre lawn.
The house in Weston had cost three point two million dollars.
He had taken a secondary mortgage at eight point five percent interest to pay for the landscaping, the infinity pool, and Chloe’s private equestrian stable. His operating accounts at Mercer Logistics were currently leveraged at twelve-to-one; he was floating seven hundred thousand dollars a month in commercial debt service, counting on a forty-million-dollar refinancing credit facility from First New England Bank to keep the entire house of cards from collapsing before the third quarter.
And First New England was merging with Rhodes Capital.
"The girl," Marcus whispered suddenly, freezing in the center of the kitchen, his voice dropping into a dry, hoarse rattle.
Chloe stopped pacing. Her eyes narrowed with sudden, toxic suspicion. "What did you say?"
"The child, Chloe," Marcus repeated, turning slowly around, his gaze vacant, unhinged, fixed on the floor. "Emma. Did you see her eyes? She’s four years old. Exactly four."
"She is Julian Rhodes’s daughter, you idiot!" Chloe spat, disgust dripping from every syllable. "You saw him! He held her shoe! He called her his daughter!"
"Men like Julian Rhodes don't marry women with four-year-old bastards unless there’s a bloodline covenant, Chloe!" Marcus’s voice cracked into an unhinged, paranoid pitch.
He rushed to the island, grabbing his phone, his thumbs flying across the screen.
"Evelyn left our house five years ago this month. The divorce was finalized in January. If she got pregnant before the decree was entered... that child is legally a Mercer heir. Under Massachusetts domestic law, if an ex-spouse conceals a marital child during dissolution proceedings, the entire settlement is voidable for fraud!"
Chloe stared at him as if he had grown a second head.
"Are you insane?! You want that child to be yours?! If that child is yours, Evelyn can petition the probate court for retroactive child support based on your gross corporate revenues for the last five years! She’ll take forty percent of your equity!"
"No," Marcus said, a slow, terrifying, predatory grin spreading across his stubbled face—the grin of a desperate gambler who had just spotted an unmarked ace on the floor.
"If that child is mine, Chloe... I have statutory visitation rights. I have parental custody standing. And Julian Rhodes cannot execute a hostile debt foreclosure against the father of his stepdaughter without creating an absolute public relations catastrophe for his charitable trusts."
He grabbed his keys from the marble counter.
"Where are you going?!" Chloe cried out, lunging for his arm.
May you like
"To the county registry of births in Cambridge," Marcus snarled, wrenching his sleeve from her grip, marching toward the garage doors.
"I'm going to pull the birth certificate. And if my name isn't on that paper... I’m filing an emergency paternity petition before the courthouse closes tomorrow afternoon."
