Chapter 8 - THE AFFIDAVIT FROM THE FORMER PARTNER
Dean Mercer came in on a rainy Thursday with the haunted face of a man who had once mistaken charisma for competence and paid dearly for it.
He was Adrian’s former business partner in a failed hospitality venture called Slate Table Group. Their company had collapsed two years earlier after unpaid vendors, inflated projections, and what Dean delicately called “Adrian’s creative relationship with truth.”
Rachel brought him into the conference room.
Nathan and I sat across from him.
Dad stayed home that day because the Boston lenders’ lawyer had sent a demand letter preserving claims, and the stress had pushed his blood pressure high enough that my mother had finally done something useful and dragged him to his doctor.
Dean didn’t waste time.
“Adrian’s been planning this longer than you think,” he said.
“How long?” I asked.
“At least six months.”
He explained that Adrian had been telling people Lark & Ivory would be his “entry point” into a bigger brand portfolio. He talked about Elena’s image, Elena’s customer base, Elena’s store locations—as if all of it were simply waiting for him to arrive and claim it.
“Did he say how?” Nathan asked.
Dean gave a tired laugh.
“By being family. That was his answer to everything.”
Then he signed the supplemental affidavit Rachel had prepared.
In it, he described one late-night conversation in painful detail.
Adrian had been drinking at a marina restaurant in Bristol, furious after I refused to introduce him to one of my landlords. He told Dean the wedding was “perfect timing” because “she won’t make a scene in front of a hundred people.” He also said something colder:
“If Elena resists, I still have Dad on paper. The old man goes down before I do.”
Rachel let the words sit in the room.
That sentence explained the ballroom more than any psychological theory ever could.
Adrian attacked me because public humiliation was supposed to force my signature.
But if he failed to get it, he still had the second trap ready.
Dad.
Nathan leaned forward.
“Did Adrian ever mention why he hated his father that much?”
Dean hesitated.
“He said your father only ever respected real success. He also said your father was rewriting everything so Elena would end up with more.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
Dean lifted a shoulder.
“I thought he meant approval. Maybe money. With Adrian, everything eventually became money.”
After he left, Rachel closed the office door.
“I didn’t want to say this until the affidavit was signed,” she said. “But I found a second area we need to review.”
“What?”
“Your family trust records.”
I felt a chill move through me.
Three clues suddenly pressed together in my head:
Adrian’s obsession with Monday.
His fixation on Dad’s name.
And Dean’s line about rewriting everything.
Whatever else was buried beneath this, it was older than my wedding.
Older than the forged transfer papers.
Maybe older than my company.
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And for the first time, I began to suspect that the real origin of Adrian’s plan had not started with Lark & Ivory at all—
but with something he believed our father had taken from him years ago.
