Chapter 6 - CLAIRE’S SISTER
Roman hadn’t called Claire’s sister since the funeral.
Now he stood beside a hospital window while her phone rang.
“If this is about signing something,” Julia said, “send it to my lawyer.”
“Nicholas is in the hospital.”
Silence.
“What happened?”
He told her. He didn’t soften it.
Julia arrived forty minutes later wearing paint-stained jeans. She passed Roman without a greeting and went straight to the crib.
“Hey, little man.”
Nicholas stirred at her voice.
She rested a hand on his blanket. Then she turned to Roman.
“I called eleven times.”
“I know.”
“You let Charles tell me visits upset the baby.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that like it fixes anything.”
Roman looked down.
“It doesn’t.”
Her anger had nowhere easy to go after that.
He showed her the proposed guardianship papers. Julia read the first page, then sat down sharply.
“Vivian?”
“She says it’s temporary.”
“Did you read the financial attachment?”
He hadn’t reached it before Sophie burst into the study.
Julia turned several pages and pointed.
Claire had inherited a minority interest in a waterfront property company. It now belonged to Nicholas’s trust. The proposed order sought authority for Vivian to act for him in certain financial matters, subject to court approval.
One pending transaction appeared in the schedule.
The sale of a warehouse parcel.
“Claire refused that sale,” Julia said. “She thought the buyer was a front.”
Roman read the buyer’s name.
“Charles recommended them.”
Julia gave a small, humorless laugh.
“Of course he did.”
She opened her phone and found a photo Claire had sent before Nicholas was born: two sisters eating fries in a parking lot, a stack of documents between them.
Under it, Claire’s message read: If I give these people another inch, they’ll sell the water under the docks.
Roman sat beside his son.
He had believed the dispute ended when Claire died.
Instead, it had simply lost the person willing to say no.
“I need your help,” he told Julia.
“With Nicholas?”
“With everything she knew.”
Julia studied him for a long moment.
“Then you have to let people see everything you did.”
He looked toward the dark window. His reflection looked older than it had yesterday.
“All right.”
Julia reached into her bag.
“Claire left copies with me. I kept them because I never trusted Charles.”
She placed a sealed envelope on his knee.
May you like
Across the front, in his wife’s handwriting, were four words.
ROMAN MUST READ THIS.
