Chapter 7 - Bradley’s Offer
Bradley called at midnight.
Eugene let the phone ring three times before answering.
“I sent you a reasonable offer,” Bradley said.
“You sent me a threat.”
“I sent you $2 million.”
“The check and the threat were in the same envelope.”
A pause.
“I didn’t write a threat.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to understand that Carol Mercer has spent years manipulating my mother.”
Eugene glanced at Carol. She sat across the room, listening.
“Why did Helen leave her half the cabin?”
“Because Carol convinced her she was in danger.”
“Was she?”
“From whom?”
“You.”
Bradley laughed softly.
It was not an amused sound.
“Eugene, I know you’re grieving. Carol found my mother at her weakest and filled her mind with stories about my father.”
“Victor is alive.”
The silence that followed was immediate.
Then Bradley spoke more carefully.
“Carol told you that?”
“Helen told me.”
“My mother was taking strong medication during her final months.”
“She made recordings.”
“Recordings can be edited.”
“She also found the original records for the villa.”
Bradley stopped pretending to be patient.
“What do you want?”
“The truth.”
“That is not a useful answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Bradley exhaled.
“My mother left me the villa legally. She left you financial security. Whatever resentment you feel does not change the will.”
“This isn’t about resentment.”
“It is always about resentment with second husbands.”
Eugene’s grip tightened on the phone.
Bradley continued.
“You spent twenty years enjoying a life my mother built. Now she is gone, and you believe grief gives you the right to question her decisions.”
“She questioned them herself.”
“Give me the cabin deed.”
“No.”
“Then the offer disappears.”
“Keep your money.”
Bradley’s voice dropped.
“Carol did not tell you everything.”
Eugene looked at her.
“What didn’t she tell me?”
“She was inside the villa the night her father disappeared.”
Carol’s face became still.
Bradley continued.
“She took something from the vault. My father spent years trying to recover it.”
“What did she take?”
“Ask her.”
Bradley ended the call.
Eugene placed the phone on the table.
Carol did not wait for the question.
“I took a ledger.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You carried it out of the villa.”
“I was nineteen and terrified. My father pushed me into the service passage and gave me a leather case. He told me not to open it.”
“What happened to it?”
“When I reached the road, Helen was waiting in a car. We drove to a hotel outside Florence.”
“And?”
“The case was gone when I woke the next morning.”
Eugene stared at her.
“You lost the most important evidence?”
“I was given medication.”
“By Helen?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
Carol explained that she remembered drinking water at the hotel. After that, there was nothing until late the next afternoon. Helen was gone. The leather case was gone. A note instructed Carol to return to the United States and never contact anyone connected to the villa.
“You obeyed?”
“My father had vanished. I was alone in a foreign country. Yes.”
“Did you ever ask Helen what happened?”
“For years, she claimed she never saw the case.”
“You didn’t believe her.”
“No.”
Eugene returned to the photograph of Nicholas Vale.
“Could this boy have taken it?”
Carol studied the image.
“I never saw him.”
“Helen knew him.”
“She knew many people she never mentioned.”
“That excuse is becoming less convincing.”
He turned the photograph over again.
Eugene deserves to know he was not Alden’s only son.
If Nicholas was Alden’s son, he was Eugene’s brother.
And if the photograph had been taken in 2004, Nicholas appeared far too young to be Alden’s child from before his disappearance.
Alden must have lived for decades after abandoning Eugene and Margaret.
He had built another family.
Carol noticed something in the photograph.
“Look at the window.”
A man was reflected in the glass behind Nicholas.
This time, the face was partially visible.
Eugene recognized Martin Sloane.
The attorney had been present when Carol’s father disappeared.
A car door slammed outside.
May you like
Headlights swept across the cabin walls.
Bradley had arrived.
