Chapter 7

The first week after the signing-that-never-happened passed in a blur of activity. Rowena learned more about the Marchetti household in those seven days than she had in six years. She learned that news traveled through the family's financial circles faster than it traveled through the house, and that the Great Room—capital letters now, the way the staff said it—had become a gathering place for the powerful and the curious, men and women who wanted to see for themselves the room where a small child had caught a vice-chairman in the act of betrayal.

She learned that Elias Marchetti was a man of his word. He came to the office every morning, his left leg steady under the brace that Pippa checked each day, and he ran his company the way he always had—quietly, firmly, with the kind of authority that did not need to raise its voice.

She learned that Preston Hale had not simply resigned. He had been escorted out of the building by security, his personal effects boxed and delivered to his home, his access badges cut. The board had voted unanimously to pursue legal action, and the city prosecutor had opened an investigation into the forged environmental report and the six million dollars that had never been placed in the capital fund.

It was incomplete justice. Rowena understood that. There would be trials, and appeals, and years of litigation, and at the end of it, Preston Hale might spend some time in prison or he might not. But the silence had broken, and the truth had come out, and the men who had helped him would not sleep easy for a long time.

On the eighth day, the oldest board member came to the house.

He arrived alone, in a plain black car, and he did not go to the study. He asked for Rowena.

She found him waiting in the Great Room, standing at the linen cart, his bushy eyebrows drawn together as he examined the folded towels.

"You're the mother," he said.