Chapter 2 - THE CALL AT GATE C19
He answered on the third ring.
“Amelia.”
His voice cracked on her name.
There was no crying on the other end.
No fear.
No pleading.
Only a calm so sharp it sounded almost elegant.
“Having trouble spending your money?”
Grant looked wildly around the concourse.
“Where are my accounts?”
“They were never yours.”
“What did you do?”
A beat of silence.
Then Amelia said, “That’s the first honest question you’ve asked in months.”
He lowered his voice and turned away from the counter.
“Listen to me carefully. If this is some stunt from your father, tell him to reverse it right now.”
“My father doesn’t take instructions from men who hit his daughter.”
Grant swallowed hard.
People were still moving around him—rolling carry-ons, coffee cups, boarding calls over the loudspeaker—but the world had become unbearably narrow.
“Amelia,” he said. “I can explain.”
“No,” she said. “You can come home.”
“Why would I do that?”
She let the silence stretch this time.
When she spoke again, her voice turned almost conversational.
“Because the moment you don’t, the criminal complaint becomes public, the board receives the full audit, and every lender who ever touched those deposits learns exactly what you were doing when they arrived.”
His grip tightened around the phone.
“What audit?”
“You really still don’t understand, do you?”
He looked back at the airline counter. The agent had stopped pretending not to listen.
Grant moved farther away.
“Amelia, enough.”
“No. Enough was the first time you put your hands on me.”
“What are you talking about? You don’t have anything.”
Amelia laughed.
It was the first time he had heard her laugh in months, and it frightened him more than shouting would have.
“My father has everything.”
Then she hung up.
Grant stared at the dead line.
Seconds later, a message arrived from an unfamiliar number.
Your ticket has been canceled.
Your bank access has been suspended pending review.
Your access badge to Whitmore Capital has been deactivated.
A car is waiting outside Terminal 5.
At the bottom was one final line.
Come home, Grant. Mr. Whitmore would like a word.
Grant looked up like a man waking into a nightmare.
May you like
For the first time since the deposits began, he understood the possibility that the money had never been a miracle.
It had been a leash.
