Chapter 3 - The Secret Partner
The quiet hum of the sixth-floor air conditioning seemed to vanish as I stared down at the digital loan document on Julian's tablet.
Right below the forged loop of my signature sat the unmistakable blue notary seal and counter-signature of Evan Cole, the thirty-year-old man I had been dating for two years and had trusted to manage my firm's daily finances.
Evan had taken me to dinner in Old Town Scottsdale on Monday night, held my hand across the tablecloth, and talked about booking our autumn wedding venue in Sedona—less than four hours after he had secretly helped my stepmother steal a million dollars against my dead mother's house.
Thirty feet away in the marble lobby, Gwendolyn noticed the sudden shock on my face as I looked at Julian's tablet, and her initial panic slowly twisted back into a cold, triumphant smirk.
"You finally figured it out, didn't you, Paige," Gwendolyn called out, folding her arms across her silk blouse even with the two sheriff's deputies standing beside her.
"You always walked around our house acting like you were so much smarter than everyone else, hiding your little company and your bank accounts from your own family," she sneered.
Beside her, eighteen-year-old Chloe wiped the spilled iced coffee off her white ankle boots and let out a shrill, vindictive laugh.
"Wait until she sees who Evan actually bought that diamond bracelet for last week, Mom," Chloe giggled, holding up her right wrist so the afternoon sunlight glinted off a twenty-thousand-dollar tennis bracelet that had been charged to my company's client entertainment account.
I felt a wave of cold nausea rise in my throat as I looked from the diamond bracelet on my eighteen-year-old stepsister's wrist back to Gwendolyn's smug face.
"Evan has been coming over to the Phoenix house every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon while you were out inspecting construction sites in Paradise Valley," Chloe bragged openly in front of the stunned office staff.
"He told us all about the four-million-dollar hillside house you bought behind Dad's back, and he is the one who told Mom to kick you out of the master bedroom so you would breach the residency trust," Chloe added proudly.
Julian Vance stepped forward beside me, his jaw tightening as he held up the red-stamped court order.
"Wait a second, Mrs. Mercer—if Evan Cole told you about the Heritage Trust, Why would you force Paige out of the house when leaving triggers the automatic termination of your husband's occupancy," Julian demanded sharply.
Gwendolyn laughed aloud, reaching into her designer handbag and pulling out a folded, blue-backed legal amendment stamped by the county recorder's office four days ago.
"Because Evan did not just co-sign the one-million-dollar equity loan on Tuesday, Mr. Vance," Gwendolyn said, slapping the document onto the reception counter.
"Six months ago, while Paige was signing a stack of routine tax renewals Evan placed on her desk, she unknowingly signed a durable power of attorney granting Evan full authority to amend her real-estate trusts in the event of a family dispute," Gwendolyn explained with venom dripping from every word.
"The moment Paige packed her bags and abandoned the Phoenix property on Tuesday night, Evan used that power of attorney to transfer the title of the Phoenix house—and a fifty-percent controlling stake in this architectural firm—directly into a joint holding company owned by him and my husband!"
My heart hammered against my ribs as Julian snatched the blue document off the counter and scanned the registration numbers with growing alarm.
"Paige, the county recording stamp on this power of attorney is genuine," Julian whispered, his face pale beneath the lobby lights.
"She signed the signature page thinking it was the subcontractor liability waiver for the Scottsdale civic project in March, and Evan swapped the top pages before filing it with the state," he said grimly.
At that exact moment, the private glass elevator at the end of the executive hallway chimed softly, and the brushed-steel doors slid open.
Out stepped Evan Cole in a tailored navy-blue suit, flanked by three armed private corporate security guards and my father, Samuel, who looked down at the carpet in pathetic silence.
"I am really sorry you had to find out this way in front of the staff, Paige," Evan said smoothly, adjusting his silk tie without an ounce of shame in his eyes.
"Effective twenty minutes ago, the holding company convened an emergency shareholder vote with your father's proxy, suspended you as Chief Executive pending an internal audit, and froze every corporate bank account tied to your name," Evan announced.
Chloe clapped her hands in delight, pulling out her phone to record my reaction as Evan's security guards stepped toward the entrance of my office to change the electronic locks.
"And since you used a four-hundred-thousand-dollar corporate bridge transfer from this firm to close the escrow on your new Paradise Valley hillside mansion two weeks ago, our lawyers just filed an emergency lien to seize that hillside house by Monday morning," Gwendolyn gloated, stepping right up to my face.
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"You thought you were going to throw us out into the heat, Paige, and instead Chloe and Evan are moving into your four-million-dollar hillside estate while you end up on the street without a dime," she whispered.
Just as Evan reached out to take the master electronic keycard from my hand, my father Samuel suddenly gasped, clutched the left side of his chest as his face turned purple, and collapsed onto the marble floor while knocking my mother's old leather briefcase out of Evan's grip—spilling a sealed probate envelope labeled ONLY TO BE OPENED IF CLARA MERCER DIES OF UNNATURAL CAUSES across my shoes.
