Chapter 5: The Brother Across the Grave
Daniel's flat was in Kensington.
Fourth floor, corner unit, the kind of address that announced itself without trying.
I had not called ahead.
He answered the door in a grey sweater and reading glasses, a glass of red wine in one hand, and for one full second he simply stared at me the way you stare at something that shouldn't exist.
Then he stepped back to close the door.
I put my hand on it.
"We need to talk," I said.
"About Meridian Slate."
His hand went still on the door.
The wine glass tilted slightly — not enough to spill, but enough.
He let me in.
The flat was quiet.
Bookshelves, good furniture, a lamp throwing warm light across a desk covered in papers.
Daniel moved the papers to the side before I could see them.
An automatic gesture.
He had done it without thinking.
"Sit down," he said.
"I'll stand."
He set the wine glass on the desk and took off his reading glasses.
He was fifty-one years old, four years older than me, and tonight he looked every year of it.
"How much do you know?" he said.
"Enough.
Tell me the rest."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he sat down in the chair behind the desk, and something in his posture changed — not quite defeat, but the thing that comes just before it.
"It wasn't supposed to go this far," he said.
"Daniel."
"I mean it.
When Victoria first approached me, it was about protecting the family assets.
That was how she framed it.
She said you were going to dismantle the company.
Sell off the routes, restructure the board, push her out.
She said Father had told her that was your plan."
"That was never my plan."
"I know that now." He pressed his fingers against his forehead.
"I didn't know it then.
Or I didn't want to know it."
"You became a director of her holding company two months before Father was first admitted to hospital."
"Yes."
"And twelve million pounds moved through that company four days after he died."
His jaw tightened.
"I didn't know the full amount.
I was told it was a routine transfer.
A restructuring of trust assets."
"You signed the director's resolution authorizing it."
Silence.
"Daniel.
You signed it."
"Yes," he said.
"I signed it."
He stood up and walked to the window.
Outside, the street was quiet, amber streetlights reflecting on wet pavement.
"She told me it was legal," he said.
"She told me Harland had reviewed everything.
I trusted her.
I trusted him.
I was — " he stopped.
"I was grieving.
Father had just died.
I wasn't thinking clearly."
"The document that removed me from the controlling interest was backdated," I said.
"The forensic examiner confirmed it.
Father may have signed something, but not that document.
Not on that date.
Victoria had it altered after he was gone."
Daniel turned from the window.
His face, when he looked at me, was not the face of a man caught in a lie.
It was the face of a man who had just understood the lie he had been living inside.
"She used me," he said.
"Yes."
"She used Father's signature.
She used his death.
She used — " He stopped again.
His hand went to the back of the chair.
"Alex.
I didn't know about the backdating.
I need you to believe that."
I looked at him for a long time.
"Then help me prove it," I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he crossed to the desk, opened the bottom drawer, and lifted out a manila folder.
He held it out to me without speaking.
I opened it.
Inside were eleven months of email correspondence between Victoria and Harland Peck.
Printed.
Dated.
Every page initialed in the corner in Daniel's handwriting.
He had been keeping them.
"I started saving them eight months ago," he said.
"When I realized something wasn't right.
I didn't know what to do with them."
May you like
I looked up from the folder.
"You do now," I said.
