Chapter 19 - Lila Summers Comes Back
For six minutes, Emma had no idea whether Andrew Weston was alive.
Thomas’s team surrounded the restaurant.
By the time they entered the basement dining room, Gideon Mercer was gone.
So was his attorney.
Andrew was found locked inside a wine cellar.
Alive.
Furious.
And holding a napkin containing four handwritten words.
YOUR TURN, MRS. VANCE.
Mercer had known.
That meant the leak inside Emma’s organization was still active.
By sunrise, Thomas had suspended thirty-two employees with access to the operation.
Phones were seized.
Servers isolated.
Security credentials canceled.
Nothing surfaced.
Then someone Emma never expected called.
Lila Summers.
“I have something you need.”
Emma almost hung up.
“Then give it to the FBI.”
“They won’t understand.”
“I promise you they understand evidence.”
“This isn’t about Andrew.”
That stopped her.
Emma agreed to meet in a federal attorney’s office in Manhattan.
Lila entered wearing simple black pants and a gray sweater.
No diamonds.
No designer purse.
No crimson heels.
She looked older too.
Prison had stripped away the performance.
Emma remained standing.
“What do you want?”
Lila looked at her.
“God, you really do hate me.”
“I don’t think about you enough to hate you.”
Lila winced.
“I deserved that.”
Emma was becoming tired of hearing those words from people who had once enjoyed hurting her.
“Talk.”
Lila sat.
“When Andrew bought me things, I thought they came from Weston Capital.”
“They did.”
“Not all of them.”
She removed a folder.
“Three months before your divorce, a company called Marlowe Consulting started paying me.”
Emma flipped through the documents.
Marlowe Consulting.
Thomas’s preliminary investigation had connected the company to Mercer Capital.
“Why?”
“I thought they were sponsorship payments.”
“For what?”
Lila laughed bitterly.
“I was sleeping with a married billionaire and posting handbags online. Apparently I had a flexible definition of sponsorship.”
Emma said nothing.
Lila continued.
“They wanted access.”
“To Andrew?”
“To you.”
Emma looked up.
“They asked where you traveled. Whether you attended board dinners with Andrew. Whether you ever opened his briefcase.”
“And you answered?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They paid me.”
Lila looked ashamed.
“For almost a year.”
Emma felt sick.
The affair itself had been real.
But Mercer had encouraged it.
Fed it.
Studied her through it.
“Did Gideon arrange the ballroom kiss?”
Lila nodded.
“A publicist told me if Andrew kissed me during the live broadcast, it would make me famous.”
“Mercer’s publicist?”
“I know that now.”
Emma slowly sat.
Her marriage had not been destroyed by Gideon.
Andrew had done that himself.
But Gideon had seen the cracks and pushed his fingers inside them.
“What else?”
Lila removed an old phone.
“They made me keep this one.”
“Why?”
“Encrypted messages.”
The device contained years of communications.
One name appeared repeatedly.
CROW.
Crow had supplied Mercer with internal information about Vance Global.
Meeting schedules.
Travel routes.
Board votes.
Arthur’s school locations.
Emma’s stomach turned.
“Can you identify Crow?”
“No.”
Thomas entered the room carrying a laptop.
“We may not need her to.”
He connected the phone.
Metadata populated the screen.
Most communications had been routed through foreign servers.
One mistake remained.
A single message sent eighteen months earlier from an unmasked network.
Glendalough Estate.
Emma’s home.
Thomas went pale.
“Someone sent this from inside the manor.”
Emma’s mind raced through staff.
Security.
Housekeeping.
Medical personnel.
Family.
Then she noticed the timestamp.
December 4.
4:22 AM.
Arthur’s birth.
Only a handful of people had been inside the medical wing at that exact moment.
Emma looked at Thomas.
“Who had network access?”
He pulled up the list.
Moira.
Thomas.
Two physicians.
Three nurses.
The systems engineer.
And—
Emma stopped.
Her mother.
No.
Another name appeared beneath it.
Dr. Liam Kavanagh.
Emma stared at the screen.
Lila looked between them.
“Who’s Liam?”
Emma could barely hear her.
The man who had cared for Arthur.
The man who sat beside her at the lake.
The man she had begun allowing into the quietest corners of her life.
Thomas spoke gently.
“Emma.”
May you like
She looked at him.
“The message originated from Liam’s device.”
