Chapter 5 - THE MONEY UNDER THE WEDDING
Daniel slept in another room at Harborcrest.
At seven the next morning, Russell Ames called.
“I pulled the Bellamy file.”
Daniel stood at a window overlooking a gray Atlantic.
“And?”
“There’s something I should’ve pushed harder on.”
Daniel hated that sentence.
Russell explained.
Six months earlier, Harold’s company had requested a short-term personal loan from Daniel.
Three hundred thousand dollars.
Harold told Daniel the money would secure construction materials before a supplier increased prices.
Daniel approved it.
Harold repaid forty thousand.
Nothing after that.
Daniel knew this.
What he did not know was where the money had gone.
Russell had now compared the dates against information received during due diligence for the larger investment.
The supplier Harold had named had never received the money.
Daniel sat down.
“Where did it go?”
“We don’t know yet.”
There was more.
Several Harborcrest wedding invoices originally designated to the Bellamys had been moved to Daniel’s wedding account after vendors complained about late deposits.
Chloe had told Daniel it was an administrative cleanup.
He had signed the revised budget without looking closely.
“How much?”
“One hundred eighty-two thousand.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes.
The money itself was not devastating to him.
That made the deception more insulting, not less.
He called Chloe.
She arrived ten minutes later in jeans and a cream sweater, yesterday’s elaborate bridal makeup gone.
Daniel showed her the figures.
She read them silently.
“How long have you known your father’s company was struggling?”
Chloe looked up.
“What does this have to do with last night?”
“Answer me.”
“My dad’s always juggling projects.”
“The construction-material loan.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“The wedding invoices?”
Her hesitation was less than a second.
Enough.
Daniel stood.
“You knew.”
“I knew they were tight for cash.”
“And you moved their bills onto mine.”
“You told me you didn’t care who paid for the wedding.”
“That isn’t the same as lying about who couldn’t.”
Chloe’s eyes filled, but her voice hardened.
“You have more money than you could spend in three lifetimes.”
“And therefore your family gets to take it without telling me?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
Daniel thought of Eleanor on the floor.
May you like
For the first time, he wondered whether the contempt the Bellamys showed people beneath them and the entitlement they showed toward people above them were actually the same instinct.
The belief that another person existed to be used.
