Chapter 5 - THE FAVOR HER MOTHER COULDN'T EXPLAIN
Eleanor didn't try to deny it.
That almost made it worse.
“When?” Genevieve asked.
“Last year.”
“Why?”
“Napa Vista was bleeding money.”
“So you gave Julian an old vendor?”
“I gave him a mechanism that had already been vetted.”
David Ross shifted slightly beside the shelves.
Eleanor looked at him.
“This is a family conversation.”
Genevieve answered before David could.
“No. That's the problem.”
Her mother's expression changed.
Genevieve had never publicly overruled her before.
Not in front of an outsider.
The humiliation ran both ways.
“David stays.”
Eleanor sat down.
Seven years earlier, she explained, North Pier had been created to centralize certain project-management costs during the Monterey renovation.
It wasn't illegal.
The company had lawyers.
Accountants.
Invoices.
Real services.
But Eleanor's explanation remained carefully narrow.
“Why hide the ownership?” Genevieve asked.
“It wasn't hidden.”
“Then who owns it?”
Eleanor looked toward the window.
David answered softly. “We can obtain that through proper channels.”
Eleanor's eyes snapped toward him.
Genevieve noticed.
“So you don't want us to.”
“I'm telling you not to turn bookkeeping into conspiracy.”
“Julian broke into my safe.”
“He opened a safe with your fingerprint.”
“While he thought I was unconscious.”
Eleanor flinched.
Good.
Genevieve needed her mother to hear the ugliness without corporate language softening it.
“And the woman he's sleeping with stood beside him.”
Eleanor looked genuinely startled.
For the first time all day, Genevieve believed her reaction.
“You're sure?”
“Very.”
The color left Eleanor's face.
“Victoria?”
“You know her?”
“She's been on the Napa project for almost a year.”
“As what?”
“Julian's investor-relations consultant.”
Genevieve laughed once.
It sounded awful.
“Of course she is.”
David received a message and stepped aside to read it.
A moment later he turned back.
His firm had run North Pier through commercial databases available to professional investigators.
The current managing member was an LLC registered in Nevada.
That entity's mailing contact was a private accounting office in San Mateo.
Victoria Lane had used the same accounting office on two vendor tax forms.
It wasn't proof of ownership.
But it was a connection.
Genevieve's stomach tightened.
Eleanor whispered, “Jesus.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
Genevieve believed that too.
Which left a more difficult possibility.
Her mother might have handed Julian a legitimate old tool.
Julian and Victoria might have turned it into something else.
Eleanor leaned forward.
“Let me deal with him.”
“No.”
“Genevieve.”
“You've been dealing with him.”
“You don't understand the lender situation.”
“Then explain it.”
Eleanor stood again.
“Napa Vista has a covenant test Thursday.”
Julian had mentioned Thursday the previous night.
Genevieve hadn't understood why.
“If the project numbers move now,” Eleanor continued, “the bank can stop the next construction draw. Contractors don't get paid. Work stops. We lose months.”
“So that's why you've been approving his invoices?”
“I approved legitimate expenses.”
“Through North Pier.”
“Yes.”
“After Mara raised concerns.”
Eleanor looked away.
There it was.
Not fraud.
Not yet.
But silence.
Preference.
Protection.
Genevieve felt something inside her relationship with her mother quietly tear.
David closed his notebook.
“I need to ask one question.”
Eleanor stared at him.
“During Monterey, did North Pier ever receive expenses that originally belonged somewhere else?”
Eleanor didn't answer.
Genevieve knew her mother well enough to recognize the difference between anger and calculation.
Eleanor was deciding how much truth she could survive.
Finally she said, “Your father made certain decisions during Monterey.”
Genevieve waited.
Eleanor's voice softened.
“And I signed off on them.”
The hidden truth wasn't Julian.
May you like
Not completely.
Whatever North Pier had become, its roots were buried inside her parents' marriage long before Julian entered Genevieve's life.
