Chapter 3 - THE BOY IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
“I didn’t vote.”
Adrian said it before I could ask.
His face had gone pale beneath the bruising.
Miriam’s voice came through my brooch.
“Adrian?”
“I’m here.”
A pause.
Then rapid typing.
“The vote was submitted using your board credentials thirty-two seconds ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
Edmund laughed once.
“I warned you.”
I turned toward him.
“You knew somebody had his credentials.”
“I knew this company stopped belonging to the people in this room a long time ago.”
Adrian moved toward his grandfather.
“Who was the boy?”
Edmund’s expression hardened.
“The vote first.”
“No.”
It was the first time I had heard Adrian speak to him with absolutely no fear.
Not anger.
Not rebellion.
Authority.
“You’ve spent my entire life deciding what I was allowed to know. Not tonight.”
Edmund looked at him for several seconds.
Then he placed the rifle on the table.
Lewis immediately removed it.
That simple action should have relieved me.
Instead, I felt something worse.
The violence had been terrible.
But violence was easy to understand.
The old photograph was not.
Miriam’s voice returned.
“The fifth vote is valid unless we can prove credential theft before certification.”
“What did it vote?” I asked.
Silence.
“Miriam?”
“It voted against Edmund’s removal.”
Edmund’s mouth tightened.
I stared at my watch.
Four independent directors supported suspension.
The fraudulent vote cast under Adrian’s identity opposed removal.
That meant the conspirator was not merely trying to impersonate Adrian.
They were trying to keep Edmund in power.
Which made no sense if Edmund himself was surprised.
Adrian looked at the pocket watch.
“Tell me about the boy.”
Edmund sat down.
For the first time since we arrived, he looked his age.
Seventy-nine.
Tired.
His hands trembled faintly as he opened the silver watch again.
“His name was Thomas.”
“Your son?”
Edmund looked at him.
“Your father.”
Adrian stopped breathing.
I stared at Edmund.
Everyone in Britain who had ever read a newspaper profile about Blackwood Industries knew Adrian’s father had been Charles Blackwood.
Charles, Edmund’s only son, had died in a sailing accident with his wife when Adrian was fourteen.
Edmund shook his head.
“Charles raised you. He loved you. But he was not the man who fathered you.”
Adrian took a step back.
“No.”
“I wanted that truth buried.”
“Why?”
“Because Thomas was my firstborn.”
Edmund turned the photograph toward us.
Thomas looked like Adrian in a way that hurt to see.
Not identical.
But unmistakable.
“He was brilliant,” Edmund said. “More brilliant than Charles. And reckless in ways brilliance sometimes allows.”
His thumb brushed the photograph.
“He believed business could be made decent. He fought me on wages. Factory closures. Pension protections. He said profit without responsibility was theft with paperwork.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
I could imagine Adrian saying exactly that.
“What happened?” I asked.
Edmund looked at me with something close to resentment.
“He fell in love.”
“Like Adrian?”
“Yes.”
The word came out sharp.
“With a woman your grandmother believed would destroy this family.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“Who?”
“Her name was Evelyn Hart.”
The room became colder.
My mother’s maiden name had been Hart.
I told myself that meant nothing.
Hart was common.
Then Edmund looked directly at me.
And I knew.
“No,” I whispered.
Adrian turned.
“What?”
Edmund’s gaze stayed on my face.
“Your mother never told you, did she?”
My broken shoulder stopped mattering.
“What are you talking about?”
“Evelyn Hart had a younger sister.”
My mouth went dry.
“Rose.”
My mother.
Edmund nodded.
Adrian stared at me.
“Your aunt knew my father?”
Edmund gave a humorless smile.
“Knew him? She was going to marry him.”
The room tilted.
I gripped the edge of a table.
Adrian moved beside me.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“No, I’m not.”
I looked at Edmund.
“What happened to Thomas?”
He closed the watch.
“He discovered irregularities inside Blackwood Industries.”
Adrian and I looked at each other.
The same words.
Almost the same situation.
“How old was he?” Adrian asked.
“Twenty-seven.”
“And then?”
Edmund stared at the carpet.
“His car went off the road in Scotland.”
The answer was too careful.
“An accident?” I asked.
Edmund did not reply.
My stomach tightened.
“Was it an accident?”
“I never proved otherwise.”
“But you suspected.”
“Yes.”
Adrian sank into a chair.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
For years, he had believed his parents died together at sea.
Now Edmund was telling him another man had been his biological father.
A man who had died after investigating the same company fraud Adrian had uncovered.
Miriam’s voice crackled through the brooch again.
“I hate to interrupt, but we have a bigger problem.”
I looked down.
“What?”
“The pension files you sent us are disappearing.”
Adrian stood.
“What do you mean, disappearing?”
“Someone is wiping the shared archive.”
I felt cold.
“That archive is mirrored.”
“So is the deletion.”
That should not have been possible.
I had created separate encrypted backups outside Blackwood systems.
Unless someone knew where they were.
Only three people knew.
Me.
Adrian.
And Miriam.
I stared at the brooch.
“Miriam, disconnect your system.”
“What?”
“Now.”
Silence.
Then she understood.
“Oh God.”
The speaker cut out.
Edmund watched me.
“You built your case through the company?”
“Partly.”
“Then you were already compromised.”
“How would you know?”
“Because Thomas made the same mistake.”
Adrian turned sharply.
“What does that mean?”
Edmund reached for the pocket watch.
This time he pressed a tiny catch beneath the hinge.
A second compartment opened.
Inside lay a narrow strip of faded paper.
Numbers.
Dates.
Initials.
A handwritten code.
I recognized the format instantly.
Payment ledgers.
“Thomas kept that?” I asked.
Edmund nodded.
“He hid it two days before he died.”
Adrian’s voice was raw.
“And you kept it for thirty years?”
“I didn’t know what it meant.”
“You investigated corporations for decades,” I said. “You expect me to believe that?”
Edmund’s eyes met mine.
“I knew what the numbers meant.”
“Then what didn’t you know?”
He pointed to a pair of initials beside every payment.
M.B.
Adrian looked toward the portrait above the fireplace.
Margaret Blackwood.
His grandmother.
Edmund’s late wife.
The woman in the photograph with Thomas.
Edmund spoke quietly.
“I never knew whether Margaret was trying to save our son…”
His voice broke for the first time.
“…or whether she paid to have him killed.”
Before anyone could respond, Lewis crossed the room.
He was holding something small he had found beneath the table where Edmund had been standing.
A gold bracelet.
Delicate.
Old-fashioned.
One engraved word ran along the inside.
EVELYN.
My aunt’s name.
May you like
And I had seen that bracelet before.
In a photograph taken the day my mother disappeared from my life.
