Chapter 36 - Sins of the Grandfather
"Open the door, Mr. Vance," a muffled, gruff voice called out from the mist on the porch.
Walter didn't look at the door. His eyes were burning into mine, his breath coming slightly faster now, the veneer of aristocratic calm beginning to fray around the edges.
"You're bluffing," Walter snarled softly. "Your grandfather went senile five years before he died. He didn't understand cloud architecture. He barely understood the dispatch terminals."
"Grandfather didn't understand the software," I said, my voice echoing off the hardwood with absolute certainty. "But he understood you, Walter. He knew that from the day he brought you into the partnership, you had been skimming off the municipal contracts. He knew you were using the terminal maintenance bays to move unmarked crates between Montreal and Philadelphia. That’s why he wrote the trust the way he did. That’s why the Oak Ridge ledger isn't just a list of accounts—it’s an inventory of his personal testimony."
Walter’s mouth tightened into a bloodless line. He knew what was in that book.
"Your grandfather was a hypocrite!" Walter spat, his voice dropping into a harsh, vibrating hiss that finally showed the rot at the center of the family. "He built this empire on bribes and backroom handshakes with corrupt aldermen, and then in his old age, he found God and wanted to wash his hands clean! He wanted to turn Vance Logistics into a charitable trust to buy himself a place in heaven, while leaving his brothers and his children with pennies!"
He slammed the brass tip of his cane down onto the floorboards with a sharp *CRACK* that made the glassware in the dining hutch ring.
"I built the third terminal!" Walter shouted, the fury spilling over now. "I brokered the deals with the state authorities! I carried this family through the recession while Evelyn sat in her drawing room buying estate jewelry and Melissa spent sixty thousand dollars a year on dressage horses for her spoiled brat sons! None of them earned a single dollar of it! Not Evelyn! Not Greg! And certainly not you!"
Above us, the floorboards of the second floor creaked.
A soft, frightened voice drifted down through the darkness of the upstairs landing.
"Mommy...?"
The sound of Chloe's voice pierced through my chest like an ice pick.
Walter’s eyes snapped toward the ceiling. The fury in his expression instantly coalesced into something far darker, far more calculating. A cruel, triumphant gleam returned to his pale eyes.
"Ah," Walter whispered, turning slowly toward the stairs. "The little angel awakens."
"Don't you dare look up there," I warned, stepping down off the bottom riser, all pretense of negotiation gone. "You take one step toward those stairs, Walter, and I swear to God you will not leave this house alive."
May you like
Walter laughed—a low, raspy, mocking sound. "With what, Nora? With your legal threats? With Marcus's memos? You're a mother cornered in an old farmhouse, and outside that door are three men who don't care about your grandfather's conscience."
He reached out his left hand, grasping the banister, and planted his cane on the first wooden step.
