Chapter 16 - The Counsel of Dorothea
Ardan did not allow herself the luxury of weeping.
She picked up the telephone and dialed Dorothea Payne’s private office line directly.
When Dorothea answered on the second ring, Ardan did not offer a greeting.
"Did you know about Thomas Keller, Dorothea?"
The silence that followed was prolonged, heavy, and chillingly familiar.
For six agonizing seconds, the only sound through the wire was Dorothea’s sharp, rhythmic breathing.
"Ardan," Dorothea said at last, her gravelly voice stripped of its usual legal briskness.
"Where are you right now?"
"I am sitting on the floor of my foyer, looking at a crime scene photograph taken thirty years ago," Ardan said, her voice shaking with controlled fury.
"Did you know?"
"I knew your mother had debts, Ardan," Dorothea said softly.
"I knew Julian Thorne held financial leverage over the Vance estate."
"I did not know the specific nature of the original incident until Julian’s death was confirmed last month."
"So you knew!" Ardan yelled, the sound bouncing off the high ceiling.
"You let me sit here and play the mourning daughter while you knew this house was bought with the blood of a twenty-four-year-old boy!"
"I protected you!" Dorothea countered fiercely.
"Eleanor made me swear on her deathbed that you would never inherit that poison."
"The entire structure of the trust was designed to pay Julian out of sight so that you could live an honorable, untouched life."
"Crispen ruined that, Ardan."
"Crispen started digging through Eleanor’s archived tax filings two years ago."
"He found the monthly payments to Lugano, thought it was unmonitored slush fund money, and decided he wanted a cut."
"He had no idea what he was touching."
"He brought down the hornets' nest on all of us."
Ardan pulled the blue Moroccan ledger from her coat pocket.
"Sterling Thorne was just here, Dorothea."
"He knows everything."
"He wants Birchwood Lane transferred to an offshore company by sunset, or he goes to the Maine State Police."
"Sterling has no standing to demand that deed," Dorothea replied instantly, her legal instincts roaring to the surface.
"The property is protected under a spendthrift trust registered in Massachusetts."
"Any transfer made under duress or extortion is void ab initio."
"He doesn't care about legal validity, Dorothea!" Ardan shouted.
"He cares about four feet of concrete under the carriage house!"
"Is the patrol launch buried down there?"
Dorothea went silent again.
When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Your mother hired a private maritime contractor from New Bedford in the summer of ninety-six."
"They poured twelve tons of industrial slurry beneath the carriage house workshop."
"Eleanor told me it was to reinforce the unstable shale bed underneath the property."
"Now I understand why she paid three times the commercial rate and had the workers sign non-disclosure agreements."
Ardan felt the room tilt around her.
The nightmare was not a phantom manufactured by Sterling Thorne.
It was physical.
It was steel, wood, and bone buried fifty yards from where she made her morning coffee.
"What do I do, Dorothea?" Ardan asked, feeling completely stripped of all defense.
"Do I give him the house?"
"No," Dorothea said, her voice turning hard as granite.
"Because Sterling Thorne is not his father."
"Julian was a thief with a code; Sterling is a sociopath who spent his father’s fortune on high-stakes baccarat in Monte Carlo."
"If you give him Birchwood Lane, he will milk you dry, and then he will sell the story to the highest bidder anyway."
"Pack a single bag, Ardan."
"Lock the house, drive straight to my office in Boston, and do not stop for fuel."
May you like
"We are going to meet with the state prosecutor before sunset."
"We are going to break the vault ourselves."
