Chapter 4 - Sienna's Real Job
Sienna flew back overnight.
We met in a crowded coffee shop near Bryant Park.
She looked different without the white dress.
I sat across from her.
"Start talking."
She pushed a flash drive toward me.
"My name isn't Sienna Vale."
I waited.
"It's Sienna Mercer."
"Why lie?"
"Because Charles would never hire me if he knew who my father was."
Her father, Alan Mercer, had been Hartwell Hospitality's controller fifteen years earlier.
The year my father and Charles signed the financing agreement.
The year Hartwell nearly collapsed.
The year Alan Mercer was blamed for accounting fraud and fired.
"He killed himself eighteen months later," she said.
Sienna continued.
"I became Julian's executive assistant because I wanted access to Hartwell records."
"So you weren't sleeping with him?"
Her face hardened.
"No."
"White dress. Honeymoon suite."
"His idea was that you wouldn't question business if I looked like the kind of woman you'd be too embarrassed to accuse."
"Did you know about the plan to make me sign in Maui?"
"Yes."
"And you went along with it."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because Charles promised me my father's file."
I leaned back.
"So everybody had a reason."
She looked at me.
"Julian's reason was bigger."
Sienna opened the flash drive on my laptop.
Audio files.
Board memos.
Internal emails.
One recording made six weeks earlier.
Charles's voice:
"Once Clara signs, the Bennett note is trapped inside the collateral package."
Julian answered:
"And after the refinance?"
"We buy it out cheap before she understands what she owns."
Then Sienna's voice.
"What if she refuses?"
Julian said, very quietly:
"She won't."
I closed the laptop.
Sienna looked sick.
"I thought he was using you financially."
"You thought?"
"I didn't know why he needed the marriage itself until last week."
She slid over a photocopy.
A clause from my father's trust.
Upon Clara Bennett's legal marriage, her voting authority over the Hartwell note became personal and could no longer be exercised by outside trustees.
Before the wedding, Charles had been negotiating with my trustees.
After the wedding, only I could approve the conversion, release, or pledge.
I stared at the page.
"So Julian didn't marry me to get access."
Sienna nodded.
"He married you because nobody else could sign."
Then she whispered, "But that's not the part that scared me."
May you like
"What is?"
"Charles has already filed something saying you did.
