“I expected you would.”
“No copies.”
“I already have partial records.”
“Of this notebook?”
“No.”
“You never opened the box?”
“I legally couldn’t.”
“Henshaw?”
“The account instructions required you.”
Rowan looked toward him.
The clerk nodded.
“Beneficiary access only.”
“Beneficiary of what?”
Henshaw looked at Vivian.
She answered.
“The trust.”
Rowan’s stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Vivian did.
He could see it.
“How much?”
She hesitated.
“Current combined value?”
“Yes.”
“Financial assets, property interests, and securities?”
“Yes.”
“Approximately thirty-eight million dollars.”
Rowan stared.
No expression.
Then he laughed once.
Quietly.
Henshaw shifted awkwardly.
Vivian watched him.
“Rowan.”
“No.”
“You asked.”
“No, I mean no.”
“To what?”
“All of it.”
He picked up the notebook.
“I’m going home.”
Rowan read until after three in the morning.
The apartment above Bellamy Hardware had never felt smaller.
Rain tapped against the west window.
The radiator hissed.
A truck passed below and rattled the glass.
Walter’s handwriting filled page after page.
Dates.
Subsidiaries.
Account numbers.
Internal project codes.
Initials.
Meetings.
Transfers.
Companies Rowan had never heard of.
Some entries were almost impossible for him to understand.
Others were terrifyingly clear.
March 6. Vale directed transfer from employee pension reserve into Halcyon Property Partners via temporary liquidity designation. No board approval located.
March 17. Asked L. Chen to reconcile. She was reassigned two days later.
April 2. Arthur believes Vale is “aggressive but loyal.” I disagree.
April 11. Claire says I am not sleeping.
Then entries changed.
Less corporate.
More personal.
Someone followed Claire from work.
A car appeared repeatedly near Rowan’s school.
Walter found his desk drawers opened after hours.
An anonymous envelope contained photographs of Rowan walking home from soccer practice.
Rowan sat back.
His hands went cold.
He remembered soccer.
He remembered Walter suddenly insisting on driving him everywhere for almost a month.
He had thought his father was being controlling.
The notebook told another story.
Walter had not walked away because he stopped loving them.
He had moved away from them because someone had shown him exactly where to hurt him.
Rowan kept reading.
One entry stopped him completely.
Claire wants me to tell Rowan everything. I cannot. He is angry already. Let him be angry. Anger is safer than fear.
Rowan covered his mouth.
For years, he had believed his father chose silence because Rowan did not matter enough to deserve an explanation.
The possibility that Walter had chosen silence because Rowan mattered too much was harder to survive.
At two in the morning, Rowan found the trust.
Not all details.
Enough.
Walter had accumulated investments and stock during his years with Ashford Consolidated. He also held a significant block of old founder-class shares transferred to him by Arthur Ashford as part of a restructuring arrangement.
The shares carried disproportionate voting rights.
Walter had placed them into a trust.
Beneficiary: Rowan Mercer.
Trust protector: Vivian Ashford.