Chapter 6
He checked his gold wristwatch, a heavy piece that caught the cold morning light. As he lowered his arm, the cuff of his white shirt pulled back, exposing a frayed thread where his left gold cufflink should have been. The right sleeve still held its matching square of engraved gold, but the left wrist was bare, the fabric loose and gaping.
“We need to be prepared for the worst,” Veronica said, her sobbing vanishing instantly as she dropped my hand.
She reached into her purse, her fingers moving with a cold efficiency that had nothing to do with grief. She adjusted her diamond ring, spinning the stone so it faced inward against her palm.
“The board is already calling,” Anthony said, his voice dropping into a low, hurried register. “We have to transition the assets before the board asks questions.”
“Did you find the trust papers in his desk?” Veronica asked.
“Not yet,” Anthony said, tapping his fingers against the wooden bed rail. “We need his signature on the proxy forms before Friday morning.”
“We will get it,” Veronica said, her voice completely flat. “One way or another.”
They stood in silence for another minute before their quiet footsteps moved toward the door, leaving me alone with the high windows of the private suite.
By two in the afternoon, the rain had started again, a steady, rhythmic tapping against the thick glass of the high window. The sky over Manhattan turned a dull charcoal gray, throwing long shadows across the private room.
Robert Gable, our family attorney for over twenty years, let himself in without knocking, his leather soles whispering on the tile. He carried a thick manila folder under his arm, the edges slightly worn from years of handling my accounts.
He placed the folder on my bedside table, right next to a small plastic cup of unused cotton swabs and a glass of water.
“A real mess, Dominic,” Gable muttered to himself, his voice slow and formal.
He opened the folder, and the crisp rustle of legal bond paper filled the silence of the room. He turned the pages slowly, his finger tracing down the columns of numbers that represented my entire life’s work.
“Twenty-four million in the offshore accounts,” he whispered, tapping his yellow legal pad with a black pen. “And no active trustee if you stay like this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper, sliding it under the corner of the manila folder. It was a draft agreement, the top header bearing the name of his law firm in bold print.
May you like
“We will need the signature by Friday,” Gable said to the empty room.
He closed the folder but left the draft agreement sitting on the table, its bottom line completely blank. He stood there for a moment, his breath whistling slightly through his nose, before he picked up his briefcase and departed.
