Chapter 5 - THE BROTHER WHO HELPED TOO LATE
Emily refused to get into the truck.
They stood under the hospital parking garage while cars passed behind them.
“You knew,” she repeated.
Chris nodded.
“How long?”
“Since May.”
It was August.
Emily laughed once, a sound with no humor in it.
“Three months.”
“I tried to stop him.”
“No. You tried to make it hurt less.”
Chris absorbed that without arguing.
He explained in fragments.
Michael had originally asked him to weld a metal cabinet as a prop for a Halloween attraction a friend was planning. When Chris later saw it installed in Michael’s basement, he understood.
He confronted Michael.
Michael threatened to throw him out of Mercer Precision and tell their mother about the money Chris had borrowed from the company after his divorce.
“So you stayed quiet.”
“I was a coward.”
Emily looked at the pouch.
“And the rods?”
“After I realized he was actually using it, I started switching pieces. Not all of them. If Michael noticed, he’d know.”
Emily wanted to hate him cleanly.
That would have been easier.
Instead she saw a man who had made small, secret repairs to a situation that required one large public act of courage.
“You could’ve called the police.”
“I know.”
“You could’ve called me.”
“I know.”
“You stood there.”
His face folded slightly.
“I know.”
Emily stepped away.
Chris said, “There’s more.”
She stopped.
“The shop debt isn’t what Jason says.”
Emily faced him.
“You already told me that.”
“No. I mean there shouldn’t be that much debt at all.”
Chris had started reviewing vendor accounts after two suppliers suddenly demanded cash up front. Payments recorded in Mercer Precision’s accounting system did not match what several vendors said they had received.
Michael handled production.
Chris handled equipment.
Jason handled books and banking.
Emily thought of the extra $130,000.
“You think Jason stole it.”
“I think money left the company.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Emily stared at the hospital doors behind her.
She had entered planning to protect herself from her husband.
She was leaving with the possibility that Michael was hurting her for a financial crisis his own brother had created.
That didn’t make Michael less responsible.
It made the family around him more dangerous.
Before Emily got back into the truck, she gave Chris one condition.
“If you want to help me now, you don’t touch that cabinet again.”
He looked confused.
“I need it exactly the way Michael left it.”
Chris understood.
May you like
For the first time, Emily was no longer trying only to survive what Michael did.
She was preparing to prove it.
