Chapter 6 - EVERYONE’S VERSION OF LOVE
Celeste’s smile weakened when I took the chair directly across from her.
Adrian sat at the end of the table, physically closer to his attorney than to his mother. A fading bruise marked his wrist where the handcuffs had been.
“You look well,” he told me.
“You look employed.”
His attorney placed a hand on his sleeve before he could answer.
Lena set a recorder on the table with everyone’s consent. Ruth remained beside the door. Gabriel stood near the windows, keeping several feet between himself and Celeste.
I placed the crescent necklace on the table.
“Tell me what happened to my mother.”
Celeste looked at Gabriel.
“Ask him.”
“I did. Now I’m asking you.”
She pressed her fingertips against the folder.
Rebecca had called her the night she disappeared. She had discovered the altered financing documents and packed two suitcases. Celeste agreed to drive us to Asheville because she feared Rebecca would report the fraud before Celeste could negotiate immunity.
“So you were helping her to protect yourself.”
“At first.”
On the highway, Rebecca told Celeste she intended to give police everything. Celeste panicked and reached for the folder of copied records on the passenger floor. Rebecca tried to stop her.
The car drifted across the lane.
It struck the guardrail and rolled down the embankment.
Celeste climbed out through the driver’s window. I was in the back seat, bleeding but conscious. Rebecca was pinned on the passenger side.
“Was she alive?” I asked.
Celeste stared at the necklace.
“Yes.”
Gabriel turned from the window.
“You left her alive?”
“She told me to take Clara.”
“To a hospital,” I said.
“She told me to get you out.”
“Not to erase me.”
Celeste’s jaw hardened. “You think I was reasoning clearly? The car was destroyed. Rebecca was screaming. You were covered in blood. I thought Gabriel would say I caused it deliberately.”
“You did cause it.”
“It was an accident.”
“Leaving us was a choice.”
Celeste found an unlocked maintenance truck near the highway and drove me into Asheville. She stopped at a twenty-four-hour clinic, using her Halcyon insurance card, then took me to Saint Anne’s.
“You kept asking for your mother,” she said. “I couldn’t listen anymore.”
She returned to the crash site the next morning. The car was empty.
Rebecca was gone.
No hospital admitted her. No body was found. Celeste cleaned the car, moved it and lied to investigators.
Gabriel stepped forward. “Why didn’t you tell me where Clara was?”
“Because you would have destroyed me.”
“I wanted my child.”
Celeste laughed once. “You wanted your company. I knew because that was what you chose when I threatened you.”
Gabriel had paid her a severance agreement and allowed her to leave without disclosing the altered financing records. He believed the arrangement would prevent scandal while private investigators found us.
“You both treated me like leverage,” I said.
Neither denied it.
I turned to Adrian.
“When did you learn she had chosen me?”
“After we were engaged.”
His attorney whispered his name, but Adrian continued.
“She said you were connected to someone at Halcyon. She said marrying you would protect us if old business ever surfaced.”
“And the shell companies?”
He rubbed his palms together.
“That was her plan.”
“You approved the invoices.”
“I thought the vendors owed us.”
Lena leaned forward. “You approved eleven-point-four million dollars in false invoices and diverted two-point-eight million.”
“Halcyon underpaid me for years.”
“You had worked there for six,” I said.
“I earned that promotion.”
“You earned it by stealing performance data from your own staff and taking credit for projects you barely understood.”
His face flushed. “You always hated that I succeeded.”
“I hated that I had to become smaller so you could call yourself big.”
“You stayed.”
The words struck the place he intended.
I had stayed after the first time he shoved me against the refrigerator. I stayed after he emptied my account. I stayed while gathering evidence because numbers gave me something cleaner than fear. Every new spreadsheet became an excuse to postpone leaving.
“Yes,” I said. “I stayed too long.”
Adrian leaned back, briefly satisfied.
“But I didn’t make you hit me. I didn’t make you forge my name. And I didn’t make you marry a woman your mother selected because she had no family to protect her.”
His satisfaction disappeared.
Celeste opened the folder on her lap.
“Mara designed the transfers,” she said. “I have copies of her spreadsheets.”
Lena did not move.
“The spreadsheets use file templates created after Mara contacted the audit committee,” she said. “Your copies contain document metadata from Adrian’s work laptop.”
Celeste looked at Adrian.
He stared at the table.
“You said you cleaned them,” she whispered.
Adrian’s attorney pushed back his chair. “My client will not answer that.”
Gabriel spoke for the first time in several minutes.
“The board is waiting.”
Celeste turned on him. “You think exposing me cleans you? You buried the first fraud.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “It makes my own exposure necessary.”
Ruth informed us that Gabriel had submitted a statement admitting his role in the 2006 financing concealment. He would step aside as executive chair while an independent committee reviewed his conduct.
Celeste’s composure finally broke.
“You would destroy your own company for her?”
Gabriel looked at me.
“No. I nearly destroyed my daughter for the company once. I will not make the same choice twice.”
I wanted the sentence to repair something.
It did not.
But it was the first cost he had willingly accepted.
Celeste gathered her papers.
“I’m leaving.”
Ruth opened the door.
Members of Halcyon’s audit committee were seated in the adjoining room. Two federal investigators waited with the company’s outside counsel. No one rushed forward. No one placed anyone in handcuffs.
They simply looked up.
Lena collected the necklace from the table and handed it to me.
“They have the bank records,” she said. “The device logs, the vendor testimony and the identity documents.”
Adrian remained in his chair.
“Mara,” he said, “you don’t want strangers hearing about our marriage.”
I fastened the necklace around my own neck.
May you like
“You made sure they already did.”
Then I walked into the boardroom and closed the door behind me.
