Chapter 6 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
That night, Margaret couldn’t sleep.
She kept replaying the board meeting in her head, kept seeing the look on Richard’s face when he realized he’d lost. It should have felt like victory. It did feel like victory. But there was a cold knot in her stomach she couldn’t shake—the memory of his last words: You have no idea what I’m capable of.
She got out of bed at three in the morning, poured herself a glass of water, and walked into the living room. The lights were off, the city glowing through the windows. She was about to go back to bed when she saw it.
An envelope, slipped under her front door.
No stamp. No address. Just her name, written in that familiar, loopy handwriting she’d know anywhere.
Rebecca’s handwriting.
Margaret’s blood turned to ice.
She picked it up, her hands trembling, and tore it open. There was only one sheet of paper inside, and only three sentences, written in the same handwriting:
He didn’t act alone.
There are three more.
Don’t trust anyone who smiles at you.
Margaret stared at the words, her mind racing. How was this possible? Rebecca had been dead for thirty-one years. There was no way she could have slipped a note under her door. Unless…
Unless someone else had access to her things. Someone who knew about the letters. Someone who’d been in the storage unit.
She grabbed her phone and called Jonathan. He picked up on the second ring, his voice groggy with sleep.
“Margaret? Is everything okay?”
“Someone slipped a note under my door,” she said, her voice tight. “It’s in my mother’s handwriting. It says Richard didn’t act alone. That there are three more people involved. And not to trust anyone who smiles at me.”
Jonathan was wide awake now. “I’m coming down. Don’t open the door for anyone. Don’t touch anything else.”
He was at her door three minutes later, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair messy, his face serious. He looked at the note, at the handwriting, and his jaw tightened.
“This is Rebecca’s, all right,” he said quietly. “I’d know it anywhere. She used to write me letters all the time when she was in hiding. Same little curl on the y. Same way she crosses her ts halfway up.” He looked up at Margaret, his eyes dark. “Only two people had access to her things after she died. Me… and her lawyer. Arthur Pritchard.”
“Pritchard?” Margaret frowned. “But he’s dead. He died ten years ago.”
“Did he?” Jonathan said, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice now. “Or did he just disappear? I tried to track him down after he retired. No death certificate. No obituary. Nothing. Just a forwarding address in the Cayman Islands that didn’t exist.” He paced the room, thinking. “Rebecca kept a journal. Every day of her life, she wrote in it. Three dozen volumes. We found most of them in the storage unit. But three are missing. The years right before she died. The years she was putting together the final plan to protect you.” He stopped, looking at Margaret. “If Pritchard is alive… and if he has those journals… he knows everything. He knows all the secrets. All the weaknesses. And if he’s working with Richard—”
“Then Richard knows things we don’t,” Margaret finished, her stomach dropping.
The next morning, they called the lawyers. By noon, they had a team of private investigators digging into Arthur Pritchard’s past. By late afternoon, they had their first lead.
Pritchard wasn’t dead. He was living in a penthouse in Miami, under the name Arthur Price. And for the last ten years, he’d been receiving regular payments from Richard’s offshore accounts—fifty thousand dollars a month, every month, without fail.
And there was more.
Two other names popped up in the investigation.
First: Clara Bennett, Richard’s personal assistant for the last fifteen years. The quiet, mousy woman who’d always been so nice to Margaret, who’d brought her coffee at the office, who’d listened when she cried about Richard being cruel. Bank records showed she’d received nearly two million dollars in “bonuses” over the years, all paid from the same offshore accounts.
Second: Henry Whitmore. Richard’s own brother. The man Margaret had always thought of as the nice one—the uncle who’d remembered Emily’s birthday, who’d defended Margaret once or twice when Richard was being particularly awful. He was on the foundation board. He was a partner at Richard’s firm. And he’d co-signed on three of the biggest forged loans.
Three people.
Just like the note said.
Margaret sat at the dining room table, staring at the three photos spread out in front of her: Pritchard, Clara, Henry. Three people she’d trusted. Three people who’d smiled at her, been kind to her, pretended to be on her side… while they’d helped Richard steal her life.
Don’t trust anyone who smiles at you.
She thought of all the times Clara had stayed late at the office “helping” her with the foundation paperwork. All the times Henry had pulled her aside at parties and told her she was “too good for Richard.” All the times Pritchard had come to the house when she was young, bringing her candy, telling her what a “good girl” she was.
They’d all been playing her.
Every single one.
“Okay,” she said finally, looking up at Jonathan and her lawyers. Her voice was steady, cold, unbreakable. “So we have four enemies now. Richard. Pritchard. Clara. Henry. They have the missing journals. They know things about my mother’s estate that we don’t. And they’re desperate.” She leaned forward, her eyes sharp. “Good. Desperate people make mistakes. And we’re going to let them.”
Ms. Chen raised an eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?”
Margaret smiled. It was the same smile Rebecca had worn in the photographs—the smile that meant someone was about to lose everything.
“We leak a story,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, the New York Times gets an anonymous tip that the Mercer estate has found a hidden cache of Rebecca’s documents. That we’ve discovered there’s a second, larger inheritance—something even bigger than the four billion. Something worth hundreds of billions. And that we’re going to announce it at a press conference next week.”
May you like
Jonathan grinned, catching on immediately. “They’ll panic. They’ll think the journals are about to be exposed. They’ll make a move. Try to destroy the evidence. Try to sell what they have. Try to kill it before it grows.”
“Exactly,” Margaret said. “And when they do? We’ll be waiting.”
