Chapter 4: The Brother Arrives
Brooke's older brother was named Griffin Harrington, and he drove a gunmetal gray car that he parked at the estate's side entrance without announcing himself.
Emma saw him from the kitchen window at half past four.
She had seen photographs of him exactly once — in a Newport society column, standing beside Brooke at a charity dinner, his hand at the small of her back in a way that struck Emma at the time as slightly too familiar for a brother.
She had filed the thought away and forgotten it.
She did not forget it now.
Griffin was taller than Brooke, with the same honey-blond coloring and the same quality of ease that wealthy people sometimes wore like a second skin.
He carried nothing.
He rang nothing.
He simply walked to the side entrance and waited, and within thirty seconds the door opened from the inside.
Brooke had been expecting him.
Emma set down the glass she was drying and moved to the corridor that connected the kitchen to the east wing.
She kept her footsteps quiet.
The door to the small sitting room at the end of the corridor was pulled nearly shut, and through the gap came voices — Brooke's first, then Griffin's, lower and slower.
"He froze the trust access," Brooke said.
"When?"
"This morning.
His attorney called the firm."
A pause.
"That's faster than I expected."
"He came home early, Griffin.
He was here.
In the house.
This morning."
"Did he see the petition papers?"
"Someone got to them first." Her voice sharpened.
"The envelope was on the table.
It was meant to go to Natalie unopened, but I intercepted it last night.
This morning it was gone."
"The maid."
"Who else."
Another pause, longer this time.
"It doesn't matter," Griffin said.
"The petition is already filed.
Freezing trust access doesn't undo that.
The legal process takes months."
"He'll fight it."
"Of course he'll fight it.
But fighting costs time.
And time is what we need." His voice dropped slightly.
"Saturday is still Saturday, Brooke.
Once you're married, your standing changes entirely.
His attorneys can't petition to remove a spouse from trust oversight the same way they can remove a girlfriend."
"He's not going to marry me on Saturday."
Silence.
"You don't know that."
"Griffin." Her voice was flat.
"He knows.
He knows about the petition.
He knows I opened Natalie's mail.
He knows I tried to get her to sign the waiver.
He was standing ten feet away when I did it."
The sitting room went very quiet.
Emma pressed herself against the corridor wall.
"Then we move to the secondary position," Griffin said finally.
"Which is?"
"You go to him tonight.
Not defensive.
Not apologetic.
You go to him with the version of this that you can survive." He paused.
"Tell him the petition was my idea.
Tell him you didn't know the full scope of it.
Tell him you were trying to protect the estate's financial structure and it went further than you intended."
"He won't believe that."
"He doesn't need to believe it completely.
He only needs to hesitate."
"And if he doesn't hesitate?"
Griffin's answer came without a pause.
"Then we make sure Natalie has a reason to leave on her own."
Emma's hand went cold against the wall.
"What does that mean?" Brooke asked.
"It means there are things about her late husband's finances that she may not be fully aware of.
Things that, if they became known, would make her position here considerably more complicated."
"Her husband has been d\*ad for six months."
"Debts don't expire with the person who made them." A chair shifted.
"I've already had someone pull the records.
There's enough there to make Natalie's situation look considerably less sympathetic than it currently does."
"You want to use a grieving widow's financial records to force her out of her mother's house."
"I want to protect what we've spent two years building." His voice was patient, the way a person is patient with someone who is being deliberately slow.
"The Mercer estate is worth considerably more than sentiment, Brooke.
You know that.
That's why you're here."
A long silence.
Then Brooke said, very quietly: "Don't remind me why I'm here."
Emma heard the chair shift again.
Footsteps.
She moved back toward the kitchen doorway and was around the corner before the sitting room door opened fully.
She stood at the kitchen counter with her hands flat on the surface, breathing carefully.
She had worked for the Mercer family for nine years.
She had watched Dominic's father run this estate with the kind of authority that required no display.
She had watched Catherine Mercer grow old in the cottage with her books and her lavender and her absolute certainty about what the family owed each other.
She had watched Natalie arrive six months ago with two suitcases and a boy who still reached for his father's hand in his sleep.
Emma picked up her phone.
She typed one sentence to Dominic's private number.
*Griffin Harrington is in the house.
You need to hear what I just heard.
Tonight.*
The reply came in under a minute.
*Come to the study.
Use the back corridor.*
Emma set her phone face-down on the counter.
Then she picked up a fresh tray, arranged it with two cups and a pot of tea, and walked calmly toward the back corridor as though she were simply doing her job.
Which, she thought, was exactly what she was doing.
Upstairs, Griffin Harrington settled into the sitting room chair and opened his phone.
He pulled up a file he had saved three weeks earlier — a scanned document, fourteen pages, detailing the late Marcus Webb's outstanding business debts.
He read the first page again, slowly.
May you like
Then he smiled.
He had no idea that the study two floors above him now contained Dominic Mercer, his private attorney on speakerphone, and a household employee who had just repeated every word of his conversation from memory.
