The Letter That Wasn't His
Chapter 05 - The Letter That Wasn't His
The envelope reached Adrian by courier at noon. It had no return address and had been delivered to Harriet's house two years earlier. She'd kept it because the handwriting troubled her. The letter inside was dated January 2024, supposedly signed by Adrian, and typed on a sheet bearing the Moretti Holdings crest.
*Daniel, enough. You received what our father left you. If you contact my family or my business again, the arrangement protecting your identity ends. I will not be held responsible for the consequences. —Adrian.*
"I didn't write that," Adrian said.
His lawyer, Celia Torres, examined the page beside the office window. Celia was fifty-eight, formerly a prosecutor, and had never been impressed by money when it arrived in an expensive suit. Adrian hired her that morning precisely because Howard Cross had once warned him against her.
"I believe you," she said. "But belief isn't evidence. We can trace the printer and compare the stationery with your company correspondence. Someone wanted a document that looked enough like a threat to frighten Daniel."
She showed him the footer. It contained the name of an obsolete holding company shut down three years earlier. "Who still had access to the old stationery?"
Adrian considered the accountants, the board, the administrative staff. Then he remembered Vivienne making herself comfortable in his office after they became engaged, ordering old cabinets cleared out, asking his assistant which closets were still full of Lorenzo's papers.
He found her in the winter garden among potted lemon trees. She had changed into cream trousers and a sweater. Without the red gown she looked younger and more tired, a woman who had stayed awake all night refusing to cry.
"Did you send Daniel a letter?" he asked.
She didn't ask how he knew the name. "Daniel isn't a safe subject for either of us."
"Did you?"
"My father handles family correspondence."
"Not my family."
She stared at him for a long moment. "You really think there's a clean line between them? You've spent ten years trying to turn a shipping company built by your father into an honest business. Who handled the property titles? Who negotiated the refinancing? Who made the old partners leave quietly?"
"Howard did."
"And you never asked what he did with their leverage after they left?"
Adrian turned away. The lemon leaves gave off a sharp scent where his sleeve touched them. "You could have told me Daniel was alive."
"I could have told you what my father told me: that there was an unstable man making claims against the estate. I didn't know how much was true until recently."
"And the dinner? The soup? Margaret Ellis?"
Vivienne's face hardened. "I tried to keep a family embarrassment from being performed in front of investors."
"You called an old woman paid."
"Because that's what Dad said she was."
"Did you ask her?"
She didn't answer. Adrian took off his engagement ring and placed it on the stone bench. His ring had been a private joke of hers, a heavy gold band she insisted he wear for the engagement. Now it made a small, irreversible sound against the stone.
"I won't marry someone who finds cruelty convenient," he said.
Vivienne looked at the ring but didn't pick it up. "Be careful, Adrian. You may discover that decency is easier to demand when other people are the ones paying for it."
He returned to the office, where Celia was reviewing the more recent filings. Howard had arranged a transfer of voting proxies tied to Moretti waterfront property. If the marriage took place, Vivienne would receive voting rights through a family settlement designed to secure her inheritance. Howard's investment group would gain leverage over the old docklands just as a redevelopment plan was scheduled for approval.
"A wedding and a land transaction," Celia said. "Romantic, in its way."
"I didn't know about the proxy arrangement."
"You signed a preliminary agreement. You may have been told it dealt with tax planning. That's negligence, Adrian, not innocence."
He took the rebuke. He had spent the previous decade treating Howard's knowledge of the past as a kind of unpleasant service the company required. If Daniel returned, he would have a claim to his father's estate and a right to demand an accounting. Howard had good reason to prefer a missing man.
At four that afternoon, Howard arrived without an appointment. He took off his overcoat and sat in the armchair Lorenzo had once called the only honest piece of furniture in the house.
"You are letting strangers tear your family apart," he said.
"You made one of them a stranger."
"Your brother suffered a head injury. He's been in and out of hospitals. He changes his name, changes his story. Daniel isn't who you remember."
"Neither am I."
Howard gave a weary little smile. "Listen to yourself. You sound like your mother. She was sentimental, too."
Adrian stood. "Get out."
"If you force this, people will look into your father's books. You've signed annual reports. Your lawyers will explain how difficult it is to separate what a man knew from what he chose not to know."
"They can start with me."
Adrian had once admired the way Howard made difficult situations disappear. When a contractor complained, Howard reached a settlement. When a reporter asked about the docks, Howard arranged a different interview. He had called it efficiency. His father called it loyalty. Yet each favor had trained Adrian to prefer quiet to knowledge, and he could see now how the habit had grown without anyone needing to order it.
He remembered the day his mother returned from a trip in 2011 with a paper bag of oranges and eyes red from crying. She told him she'd visited an old friend. He'd kissed her cheek, asked if she wanted supper, and gone back to a conference call. At the time he thought he'd been considerate. Now he wondered if she had been waiting for him to ask one more question.
Howard rose slowly. There was no threat in his parting words, and that made them colder. "Your mother eventually understood the cost of bringing Daniel home. You should ask Margaret about that before you decide she's a saint."
After he left, Adrian called Sophie. She had been helping Margaret gather names from Judith's notebooks. "Find out what he means about my mother," he said.
Margaret heard the question. She gripped the back of a chair. For a moment, seventy-two years seemed to settle on her shoulders all at once.
"Evelyn came to the hospital in 2011," she said. "She found Daniel. I took her there myself."
May you like
Adrian stared at her.
"Your mother knew he was alive," Margaret whispered. "And she made me promise not to tell you."
