Chapter 34 - The Midnight Rendezvous
The realization hit the room like a cold draft.
Julian Sterling had not come across the Atlantic merely out of corporate greed or long-simmering resentment toward his father. He believed Declan had been an accomplice to Arthur Vance’s attempt to hijack his mother’s legacy.
"We have to see him," I said immediately. "Not in a courtroom with twenty lawyers billing two thousand dollars an hour. Tonight. Face to face."
"Cassidy, he won't meet with us," Declan argued, standing up and pacing across the library rug. "He issued an ultimatum. He's insulated inside a high-floor suite at the Carlyle or the St. Regis, surrounded by corporate security and litigators."
"He's not at the St. Regis," I replied, pulling my phone from my pocket. "When the courier handed me the delivery on the porch, I noticed the tracking manifest clipped to the clipboard. The origin pickup wasn't a corporate courier depot in Queens. It was an executive dispatch service stationed at the private air terminal in White Plains. Julian landed his Gulfstream in Westchester this afternoon. He didn't go into the city. He’s staying local."
Declan stopped pacing. "Why White Plains? If his lawyers are in Manhattan, why stay in Westchester County?"
"Because William's original estate records—the personal archives that weren't transferred to the corporate headquarters—are stored at the family repository in Mount Kisco," Declan whispered, his eyes widening. "The old carriage house William converted into his private vault. Julian knows about it."
"Get your coat," I said.
Within fifteen minutes, we had informed our security detail at the front gate, left our trusted nanny, Sarah, watching over the girls with explicit instructions to keep the perimeter gates locked, and were driving south along the darkened Taconic State Parkway in Declan’s Range Rover.
The rain that had threatened all afternoon had finally begun to fall, a steady spring drizzle that slicked the pavement and blurred the red taillights of the few vehicles traveling the parkway at midnight.
Declan drove with both hands gripped firmly at ten and two, his jaw tight. "If he broke into Mount Kisco..."
"He didn't break in," I said. "If he holds legal standing as William’s biological child under British law, and has the High Court summons, he likely walked in with a court-appointed custodian or an emergency preservation order. He’s looking for something specific, Declan. He’s not looking for financial records. He’s looking for the original agreements between his mother and your father."
"My father was a hoarder of leverage," Declan said, his voice laced with old pain. "He never threw away a single ledger, a single handwritten note, or a single draft of an agreement. If there was a document that proved Helena Sterling signed under duress, William kept it locked in that vault so no one else could use it."
We turned off the highway onto the quiet, wooded back roads of Mount Kisco. The Hawthorne carriage house was an imposing stone structure built in the 1920s, set back half a mile from the road behind heavy wrought-iron gates and ancient hemlock trees.
As we approached the entrance, the wrought-iron gates were swung wide open. Fresh tire tracks cut through the wet gravel.
Parked directly in front of the stone arched entrance of the carriage house were two black Lincoln Navigators with tinted windows.
"He's here," Declan said quietly, killing the headlights and rolling the Range Rover to a stop fifty yards back along the driveway.
"Leave the engine running," I said. "We walk in together. No hostility, Declan. We don't defend Arthur. We tell him the exact truth about what Arthur did to us."
We stepped out into the damp chill of the night air. The only sound was the rhythmic tapping of rain on the dead leaves lining the driveway. We walked up the stone steps of the carriage house. The heavy oak door was slightly ajar, a sliver of bright halogen light spilling out across the wet stone porch.
Declan pushed the door open.
Inside, the vast, vaulted room was lined from floor to ceiling with steel archive shelving, holding hundreds of gray preservation boxes containing fifty years of Hawthorne family history. In the center of the concrete floor sat a heavy wooden conference table.
Standing by the table, reviewing a thick, yellowed ledger under the glare of a portable work lamp, was a tall, lean man in a tailored dark charcoal overcoat. He had the sharp, high cheekbones of the Hawthorne family, the same deep-set hazel eyes as Declan, but his hair was silvering at the temples, cut with military precision.
Julian Sterling looked up from the ledger, his gaze entirely calm, as if he had been expecting us for hours.
May you like
"You're thirty minutes later than I calculated, Declan," Julian said, his English voice echoing off the stone walls. "And Cassidy. Welcome to the family mausoleum."
***
