Chapter 7
My security chief pulled the apartment entry logs.
I expected Ryan and Linda.
I found someone else.
Elliot Mercer.
My adviser for nineteen years.
Three visits in two months.
Always when I was out of town.
Never mentioned to me.
I stared at the screen.
Emily saw the name.
Her face changed.
“You know him?”
She nodded slowly.
“He came once while I was in the locked room.”
My entire body went cold.
“You heard him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
She closed her eyes, remembering.
“He told Ryan you were becoming sentimental.”
That word again.
Apparently loving my daughter had become an organizational diagnosis.
“What else?”
“That you would never put Ryan on the council while you believed he needed you.”
Ryan looked away.
I understood.
Elliot had been feeding the resentment.
Why?
Emily continued.
“He said the baby changed things.”
“How?”
“He said once there was a grandson, you would start thinking about what came after you.”
I almost smiled without humor.
Succession.
Older men cannot resist turning unborn children into strategy.
Ryan finally spoke.
“Elliot said you were planning to pass everything through Emily.”
“I was planning nothing.”
His face changed.
That mattered.
He had been acting against a future that did not exist.
I looked at him.
“Elliot told you what you were afraid to hear.”
Silence.
“That I thought you were weak.”
Ryan swallowed.
“That Emily had more influence.”
Nothing.
“That your son would belong more to Bennett than Cole.”
His eyes hardened.
There it was.
May you like
Elliot did not invent Ryan’s insecurity.
He simply gave it direction.
