Chapter 10 - The Signature He Never Gave
"I didn't sign that," Nathan said.
June enlarged the filing on her tablet. "It's an electronic signature copied from the authorization Dad kept on file. Pierce controlled the account that submitted it."
"Can you prove that?" I asked.
"There's an audit trail. And Nathan was at the hospital when the statement was transmitted."
Vega requested the court records. Meanwhile, Nathan called his company's legal department and instructed them to suspend Pierce's access to internal records pending independent review.
His chief financial officer hesitated. "Mr. Cole, Edward has handled your family's affairs for twenty-eight years."
"That's twenty-eight years too long if he's forging my name."
I almost smiled. Almost.
By noon, the doctor cleared me to go home with a sling and pain medicine. Lily wanted our apartment, her own blanket, and the cracked yellow mug she used for warm milk.
Nathan offered a guarded guesthouse. I refused.
"Money isn't what she needs," I told him. "She needs to know where her shoes are."
He nodded and asked permission to send a police patrol by our building. Vega arranged it through her department instead, so nobody could claim Nathan was using private guards to control us.
At my apartment, the front door was locked. Nothing looked broken. But Lily's bedroom smelled like expensive perfume, and the drawer under my bed was open.
The folder containing her birth records was gone.
On the pillow lay her old blue sweater, the one from the photograph I had mailed five years ago. Someone had kept it all this time, though I'd thrown the original away after Lily outgrew it.
Tucked inside the sweater was a note, written in the same slanted letters as Wallace's last message:
May you like
HE DID NOT DIE BEFORE HE TRIED TO FIX IT.
Below that was a bank locker number and an address.
