Chapter 12 - What a Mother Protects
Charlotte moved Skylar to a secure location with Naomi and two officers. She told her daughter enough to keep her cautious but not enough to make fear permanent.
“Is Grandpa’s death my fault?” Skylar asked.
“Nothing that happened before you were born could be your fault.”
“Then why am I a key?”
Charlotte thought of Cross’s five directions: past, present, blood, choice and truth.
“Because Grandpa trusted the future to someone he loved.”
Skylar remembered a game Thomas had played when she was five. He would name five compass points, and she would answer with colors. North was blue. East was gold. South was green. West was white. Home was red.
The colors matched tiny marks on the brass disk, the microfilm and the photograph. When arranged in Skylar’s order, they formed a sequence of letters and numbers.
It opened a cloud archive registered under Samuel Cross’s old company.
The files were devastating. They documented Dane’s bridge fraud, bribery network, shell companies and surveillance of Thomas. They also showed payments to Martin Bell, Leonard and Gertrude. A recorded call captured Dane instructing Gertrude to encourage Charlotte and Brandon’s relationship after he learned Charlotte had inherited the house.
Gertrude had turned her son’s marriage into a twenty-two-year recovery operation.
Charlotte listened once. She did not need to hear it again.
Federal investigators took custody of copies. Arrest warrants were prepared for Victor Dane, Bell and Leonard. Gertrude was charged with fraud, conspiracy and evidence tampering. Hailey negotiated limited immunity in exchange for records and testimony.
Brandon asked to see Charlotte.
“I didn’t know she arranged our first meeting,” he said. “I swear.”
“But you knew enough later.”
“Dane made me feel like I had been cheated out of a life. Every time you succeeded, I heard him saying it should have been mine too.”
“So you punished me for having what you wanted.”
“I hated needing you.”
Charlotte nodded slowly. At last, he had said something honest.
She placed divorce papers before him.
“You do not need me anymore.”
Brandon signed. He also agreed to surrender financial records and testify. It would reduce his sentence, not erase it.
Before guards took him away, he said, “Dane will come for Skylar. The archive has one file he needs more than all the others.”
“Which file?”
“I don’t know. He called it the Crown Account.”
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That evening, federal agents raided Dane Capital.
Victor Dane was gone.
