Chapter 5 - THE MAN IN THE HOSPITAL HALLWAY
Nathan moved Emma and Sophie to a private floor of Lakeshore Medical before sunset.
Two security officers stood outside the elevator.
Marcus placed another at the stairwell.
Nobody entered without identification.
Nathan personally gave the nurses a list of approved visitors.
Emma watched all of it with growing discomfort.
“This is ridiculous.”
Nathan turned from the window.
“Someone threatened your life.”
“They threatened the box.”
“They threatened you.”
“I don’t want guards following me forever.”
“They won’t.”
“How long?”
Nathan considered the question.
“Until I know who tried to kill you.”
Sophie, sitting cross-legged on the bed with coloring pencils, looked up.
“People don’t really do that, right?”
Nathan immediately regretted the wording.
Emma shot him a look.
He crouched beside Sophie.
“Sometimes people say scary things because they want other people to be afraid.”
“Are you afraid?”
Nathan smiled gently.
“Yes.”
Sophie seemed surprised.
“You are?”
“Very.”
“But you’re rich.”
Emma almost choked.
Nathan looked at Sophie.
“Money doesn’t stop fear.”
“What does?”
Nathan glanced at Emma.
“Knowing what you’re protecting.”
Sophie considered that carefully before returning to her picture.
Later that evening, Monica Bennett arrived from Milwaukee.
Rachel’s older sister walked into the room like a storm.
She was forty-seven, tired, furious, and still wearing a supermarket manager’s name badge clipped to her sweater.
She rushed to Emma first.
“Oh my God.”
Emma hugged her.
“I’m okay.”
“You were hit by a car!”
“Technically, that makes ‘okay’ debatable.”
Monica burst into tears.
Then she saw Nathan.
Her face hardened instantly.
“You.”
Nathan stood.
“Monica.”
“You remember me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m shocked.”
Emma looked between them.
“You two know each other?”
Monica laughed without humor.
“We met once.”
Nathan remembered.
Rachel’s twenty-third birthday.
Monica had spent the entire evening warning him not to hurt her sister.
Apparently she had been right to worry.
Monica turned toward Emma.
“What is he doing here?”
Emma swallowed.
“He’s my father.”
Monica closed her eyes.
“So Rachel finally told you.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew.”
Emma looked wounded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t my secret.”
“She’s dead.”
Monica’s voice softened.
“I know, sweetheart.”
“She died and left me to figure everything out.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nathan stepped in.
“Monica, I need to know what you remember.”
She looked at him with open contempt.
“You don’t get to interrogate me.”
“Someone tried to kill Emma.”
The anger disappeared from Monica’s face.
“What?”
Nathan told her about the SUV.
The break-in.
The phone call.
Monica sat down.
“Oh, God.”
“You know something.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Monica.”
“I know Rachel was scared before she died.”
Nathan stepped closer.
“Of whom?”
“She never said.”
“Think.”
Monica rubbed her forehead.
“Two months ago she called me at midnight. She asked whether I remembered your uncle.”
“Graham?”
“Yes.”
Nathan’s pulse accelerated.
“What did she say?”
“That she had seen him.”
“Where?”
“Outside the library.”
Emma sat upright.
“Mom never told me that.”
Monica looked at her.
“She didn’t want to scare you.”
Nathan asked, “Did Graham speak to her?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Why would he contact her after sixteen years?”
“I asked the same question.”
“And?”
Monica looked at Nathan.
“She said, ‘Because Emma is almost seventeen, and somebody is afraid of what that means.’”
Nathan frowned.
“What does her age mean?”
Monica shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel Mercer, who had entered quietly near the end of the conversation, spoke from the doorway.
“I might.”
Everyone turned.
Daniel held a tablet.
“Nathan, I spent the afternoon reviewing old Cole family trusts.”
Nathan frowned.
“What does that have to do with Emma?”
“Potentially everything.”
Daniel entered.
“Your grandfather established the Evelyn Cole Family Trust in your mother’s name.”
“I know.”
“You inherited the voting rights when Evelyn died.”
Nathan nodded.
The trust held approximately six percent of Northstar stock.
Enough to matter.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“The trust document has an old descendant provision.”
Nathan stared at him.
“What provision?”
“If Evelyn’s only child—meaning you—has biological descendants, a portion of those voting rights automatically transfers into a protected descendant trust once the eldest descendant turns seventeen.”
Emma looked confused.
“I’m sixteen.”
Daniel nodded.
“For four more months.”
Nathan slowly understood.
“How much?”
“Three percent of Northstar.”
Monica gave a low whistle.
Nathan did the math instantly.
At current valuation, more than two hundred million dollars.
But money was not the true issue.
Voting power.
Three percent could change the balance inside Northstar.
Especially during the Sterling acquisition.
Nathan looked at Daniel.
“Who controls those shares until Emma turns eighteen?”
“A court-appointed trustee, but the beneficiary is Emma.”
“And Graham?”
Daniel’s expression darkened.
“If no descendant exists, Graham’s branch of the Cole family becomes contingent beneficiary if you die without children.”
The room fell silent.
Emma stared at Nathan.
“So if I didn’t exist…”
“Graham potentially benefits,” Daniel said carefully.
Nathan’s face hardened.
Monica whispered, “Rachel knew.”
Nathan turned.
“She knew about the trust?”
“I don’t know.”
“She must have.”
Monica shook her head.
“Rachel hated your family’s money. She wouldn’t research something like that unless someone forced her to.”
Nathan thought about Graham appearing outside Rachel’s library.
Sixteen years of hidden letters.
The attempted hit-and-run.
The timing.
Emma’s seventeenth birthday approaching.
It was no longer a family secret.
It was a financial motive.
And Graham Cole had hundreds of millions of reasons to make Emma disappear.
At 10:15 p.m., Nathan walked Monica to the elevator.
She stopped before leaving.
“I hated you for years.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Nathan said nothing.
“She cried after every returned letter.”
His jaw tightened.
“She kept telling herself there had to be an explanation.”
Monica’s eyes filled.
“Eventually, she stopped believing that.”
Nathan looked away.
“I would have come.”
“I know that now.”
The words surprised him.
Monica continued.
“I didn’t know then.”
Nathan swallowed.
“Did she hate me?”
Monica shook her head.
“That was the problem.”
The elevator doors closed.
Nathan stood there long after she disappeared.
When he returned to Emma’s room, she was awake.
Sophie slept beside her.
Emma whispered, “Did you really love Mom?”
Nathan pulled a chair closer.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you keep looking?”
That question hurt more.
Nathan considered giving excuses.
He refused.
“Because eventually I believed what I was told.”
Emma stared at him.
“That she left?”
“Yes.”
“You gave up.”
Nathan nodded.
“I did.”
Emma looked surprised by the admission.
“You’re not going to defend yourself?”
“There are things I didn’t know. There were lies told to both of us.”
Nathan paused.
“But yes. At some point, I stopped looking.”
Emma turned toward the window.
“Mom didn’t.”
“I know.”
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then Emma whispered, “I’m angry at you.”
“You should be.”
“I’m angry at her too.”
Nathan nodded.
“You’re allowed.”
“She should have told me sooner.”
“Yes.”
“I feel terrible saying that because she’s dead.”
Nathan’s voice softened.
“Loving someone doesn’t require pretending they made every choice perfectly.”
Emma looked at him.
“You really believe that?”
“I’m learning to.”
Her mouth trembled.
Before either could speak again, there was a noise in the hallway.
A man’s voice.
Then Marcus shouted.
“Stop!”
Nathan stood instantly.
The door opened.
A hospital orderly stepped inside pushing a medication cart.
Nathan frowned.
He had never seen him before.
The man looked at Emma.
Then at Nathan.
Something about his expression was wrong.
Too calm.
Nathan stepped between him and the bed.
“Who are you?”
The orderly reached toward his pocket.
Nathan moved first.
He caught the man’s wrist.
A small syringe dropped onto the floor.
Emma gasped.
Marcus rushed through the door with two security officers.
They forced the man against the wall.
Sophie woke screaming.
Nathan grabbed her and pulled her close.
Marcus looked at the syringe.
“What is that?”
The man said nothing.
A nurse appeared and went pale.
“He doesn’t work on this floor.”
Nathan’s blood ran cold.
Security searched the man.
No hospital identification.
No wallet.
Only a prepaid phone.
Nathan stared at him.
“Who sent you?”
Silence.
Nathan stepped closer.
“Was it Graham?”
For the first time, the stranger’s eyes shifted.
Just slightly.
But Nathan saw it.
Marcus saw it too.
Then the man smiled.
“You think this is about your uncle?”
Nathan froze.
The stranger’s smile widened.
“You don’t know anything.”
Police took him away twenty minutes later.
Nathan sat beside Emma until Sophie stopped trembling.
Emma looked at him.
“He was coming for me.”
“Yes.”
“You can say it.”
Nathan shook his head.
“Not tonight.”
Emma’s eyes filled with fear.
“Who would hate me this much?”
Nathan reached for her hand.
“Nobody hates you.”
“Then why?”
“Because you matter to someone’s plan.”
Emma’s fingers closed around his.
Nathan looked toward the hallway.
He had assumed Graham was the center of everything.
But the man with the syringe had planted a new doubt.
Maybe Graham was involved.
Maybe he had been involved from the beginning.
But perhaps Nathan had spent so much time looking at his uncle that he had missed someone closer.
Someone who knew exactly when Emma was found.
Someone who knew Nathan had left the Sterling meeting.
Someone with access to corporate security contractors.
And someone who desperately needed the Sterling acquisition to happen.
Nathan’s phone vibrated.
Lauren.
He answered.
Her first sentence made him stand.
“Nathan, I found something inside the Sterling deal.”
“What?”
“A hidden side agreement.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“Between whom?”
“Sterling Industries…”
May you like
She paused.
“And a company secretly controlled by Graham Cole.”
