8. Alex
Alex
The bedroom door closes behind Belle.
I have Polanski on the phone before her footsteps fade.
“Mr. Hartley.” Traffic grinds behind him. A horn blares, followed by the heavy slam of a car door. “I was going to call in the morning.”
“It’s morning somewhere. Have you looked into Mark’s finances and his life before Riverside Falls like I asked?”
“I have.” A pause, a sigh, and I hear him speak, “Riverside Falls, I can map to the dollar. The lumber accounts, the trust structure, the attorney’s billing.
Before Montana, he’s supposed to have lived in New York, and there’s nothing there.
No leases, no filings, no tax records I can reach.
The man is a black hole until the day he arrives. ”
“Then look again. Something isn’t right here. It all seems to come back to him.”
“There’s almost nothing under his name. No rental contracts I can verify, no employment records. not even a parking ticket. Several files that should be public are sealed.”
My hand stills above the desk. That’s not suspicious at all.
“Why are his records sealed? He’s dead.”
“I’m trying to find more. Whoever buried them has reach.”
“Then reach farther.”
“There are limits to what money can buy.”
“Then it’s fortunate I’ve never cared about limits.”
He hesitates and then adds, “one thing did stand out, from the outside, Mark’s finances looked healthy, but underneath it all, he was bleeding money.”
“What do you mean?”
“The company was profitable, but the books kept showing losses. Most of it was buried as expansion costs, so at first glance, it looked like he was growing too fast and spending heavily to do it. I had a forensic accountant go through everything again.”
“The money wasn’t going into the company,” I say.
Polanski shakes his head. “It was being redirected into Mark’s personal account.”
“So either he was stealing from his own business, or he was in a hole and trying to pay his way out of it.”
“That’s how it looks.”
“How did we miss this?”
Polanski exhales. “Everything we found in Riverside Falls made him look clean. Pillar of the community. Took care of his brother’s kids. Paid his taxes. Gave generous bonuses to his employees. Everyone respected him. Not exactly the picture of someone in financial trouble.”
A pause, and then I hear him sigh on the other end.
“It’s on me, boss. I should’ve dug deeper. If I’m being honest, I put all the attention on Ms Clark. Mark was an afterthought.”
Can I really blame him? He followed my lead, and I was the one who put everything on Belle. The more we uncover, the less Mark resembles the successful businessman everyone believed him to be.
“Could that be why he was killed?”
“It’s possible.”
Belle’s words come back to me.
There are people from Mark’s world looking for me and Liam.
“She said people from Mark’s world were after them. Could this be connected?”
“My guess? Maybe his brother’s business was too much for him to handle. Mark got himself involved with people he couldn’t afford to owe. When it caught up with him, Belle and Liam became collateral damage.” Polanski pauses. “But right now, that’s all it is. A theory.”
“Then find proof. Pull apart his life in New York. People go back to what they know. If he owed someone that kind of money, it wasn’t in Montana or we would have heard about it. It has to be New York. A bookie, a loan shark, someone he thought no one would ever think to look for. Start there.”
“Got it, boss.”
I remain behind the desk, staring at the hallway.
People from Mark’s world.
Belle had not meant to say it. I saw the regret the moment the words escaped. She shut down before I could ask what Mark had done or who might still be searching for her.
For once, I let her.
Now I take the old explanation apart and try to rebuild it with the pieces she has given me.
Mark was not the generous guardian everyone believed him to be. That much is becoming difficult to deny. His finances were unstable. Money moved through accounts without a clear purpose.
I have seen men with more money than they could spend lose everything because they could not stay away from the tables in Vegas. I have watched billion-dollar companies collapse because the man at the top kept borrowing, convinced the next deal would pull him out of the hole.
Mitchell Lumber should never have failed.
By every account, Belle’s father, Robert Mitchell had built it well enough to keep running without Mark interfering at all. It was profitable. Stable. Mark could have left it alone and lived comfortably for the rest of his life.
Instead, he got involved and ran it into the ground.
Maybe the company was not failing him. Maybe he was draining it to pay off debts that kept growing faster than the profits could cover them.
Debts owed to men who did not send polite reminders when a payment was late.
Maybe Mark owed the wrong people, and eventually they came to collect.
And maybe Belle found him dead, took Liam, and ran because she knew those men would come for them next.
The explanation fits better than murder for an inheritance. It accounts for the fear, the false name, and the way her eyes search in panic whenever she walks outside.
It even explains why she lived for ten years as though every dollar might be her last.
What it does not explain is why she never came to me.
I would have taken her and Liam anywhere. I would have burned through every cent I had, called every man my father knew and put my own body between her and whoever was hunting them.
She knew that.
Or I thought she did.
Maybe Belle never trusted me enough to ask.
Or she simply never loved me the way I loved her.
The thought settles beneath my ribs with an old, familiar weight. I have spent ten years believing she betrayed me for money. Somehow, the possibility that she ran because she was terrified hurts in a different place.
She was afraid, and I was not the man she reached for.
Still, one part refuses to fit.
My father.
If Mark was killed over his own debts, how does that connect to the explosion that took my father and nearly killed Danny?
And how did Belle know enough to call me at precisely the right moment?
I rebuild the old explanation because I know every piece of it.
The trouble is, none of the pieces stay where I put them anymore.
I dial Camille.
“We’re going to New York next weekend.”
Keys begin clicking on her end. “The usual suite?”
“Yes. Have clothes delivered for Emma Clarke. Gowns, shoes, jewelry, whatever else she’ll need.”
“What size?”
I look toward the closed bedroom door.
“I don’t know.”
“Dress size?”
“Send options.”
“Shoes?”
“Every size.”
The typing stops.
“You want every size of everything?”
“I want her to have what she needs without wasting time at a store.”
Camille wisely does not comment.
“Color?”
“Dark green.”
“Emerald? Forest? Sage?”
“All of it.”
I end the call before she can ask even more insipid questions.
Belle sits across from me on my Gulfstream with a book open on her lap.
She has not turned a page since we left Dallas.
She is completely healed from the attack. The bruises are gone, and her shoulder no longer stiffens when she reaches for something. There is nothing left to show what happened in that alley, but it still sits between us.
Every time I look at her, I see her clinging to me in the rain. I remember the feel of her mouth beneath mine and the kiss I have been trying—and failing—not to think about since.
Whenever she looks at me, I wonder if she remembers it too.
Sunlight spills through the windows and catches the locket at her throat. Her fingers close around it whenever the silence lasts too long.
The flight attendant appears beside us again, offering coffee, champagne, or anything else Belle might want.
The table between us is already crowded with food I had brought in before takeoff—fresh fruit, pastries still warm from the oven, cheeses, smoked salmon, and enough breakfast to feed half the cabin.
I even ordered the mushroom patties she used to love years ago, hoping she would notice.
Belle has ignored all of it.
The attendant waits, ready to fetch something else at the slightest encouragement, but Belle only shakes her head.
“That will be all,” I say.
The attendant disappears toward the galley.
Belle glances up and catches me watching her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She studies my face. “You look like you used to when something on the site wasn’t fitting the way you wanted it to.”
“Nothing I’ve built since seems to fit the way it should.”
I look at her when I say it.
She holds my gaze.
“Do you miss it?” she asks.
My jaw tightens.
Of course I do.
“I don’t miss the pay.”
The corner of her mouth lifts before she can stop it.
Barely a smile, but enough to send heat through me.
Then she drops her eyes back to the book.
“Eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You will be by the time we land, and the food at these things is never good.”
Her eyebrow rises. “Speaking from experience?”
“Danny hosts this gala every year. I’ve suffered through enough miniature dinners to know.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Belle.”
Something in my voice makes her look at me again.
I nod toward the food. “Pick something.”
She lets out a small breath, sets the book aside, and reaches for one of the mushroom patties. She bites into the corner, taking the smallest bite possible, as though she is only doing it to make me stop talking.
Then her eyes widen.
The next bite is bigger.
I cannot stop the smile that pulls at my mouth, but when she glances up, I school my face back into bored indifference.
She knows.
I can see it in the way she looks at me. She knows I remembered.
Neither of us gives it any more weight than that.
She picks up another patty, settles back with her book, and finally turns the page.
My gaze follows the movement before I can stop it.
The soft press of her lips. The crumb she catches with the tip of her tongue. The slow way she chews while pretending not to notice me watching.
I should look away.
I don’t.
She takes another bite, and every thought in my head narrows to her mouth.