Chapter 4 - Serena Vale Before Nathan
The employment file took Emily back sixteen years.
Serena Vale had been twenty-seven when Richard Bennett hired her into Bennett Meridian’s acquisitions department.
Bright.
Aggressive.
Fluent in financial modeling.
Within eighteen months she was working directly for Richard on confidential hotel purchases.
Her performance reviews were exceptional.
Then everything stopped.
No gradual decline.
No warnings.
One Monday Serena was praised.
By Thursday she was gone.
Olivia spread the old records across her dining table.
“Your father paid her eighteen months’ salary under a separation agreement.”
“For someone he believed stole confidential information?”
“He wanted silence.”
Emily looked disgusted.
“Dad always thought scandal was worse than misconduct.”
“Many founders do.”
“What was Account 7719?”
“We don’t know.”
The original audit file was missing.
Emily called Martin Cho.
He searched company archives.
Nothing.
Then Emily remembered her father’s longtime accountant, Paul Mercer.
Paul had retired to Connecticut.
They drove there that afternoon.
Paul looked troubled the moment Emily said Serena’s name.
“I wondered when this would come back.”
Emily sat forward.
“What did she do?”
Paul glanced at Olivia.
“Is this privileged?”
“No,” Olivia said. “But tell the truth.”
Paul sighed.
“Your father suspected Serena was feeding confidential acquisition prices to bidders competing against Bennett Meridian.”
“For money?”
“Yes.”
“Did you prove it?”
“Not completely.”
“What did Account 7719 have to do with it?”
Paul stared at her.
“Where did you hear that number?”
“Anonymous note.”
Paul walked to an old filing cabinet.
He returned with handwritten ledger copies.
“7719 was not a company account.”
“What was it?”
“A private custodial account your mother opened.”
Emily frowned.
“My mother?”
“Catherine distrusted some of the transactions around Serena. She started collecting copies independently.”
Emily stared.
Her mother had always seemed removed from company politics.
Elegant.
Quiet.
Focused on museums and charities.
Apparently quiet did not mean unaware.
“What happened to the account?”
Paul shook his head.
“It wasn’t a money account. That was Catherine’s shorthand for a bank vault box.”
Olivia leaned forward.
“Safe-deposit box 7719?”
“At First Manhattan Trust.”
Emily’s heart beat faster.
“Does it still exist?”
“I don’t know.”
First Manhattan Trust had merged twice and now belonged to Atlantic Republic Bank.
Olivia made calls.
Records from sixteen years earlier would require identification and probably estate documentation.
No instant answers.
Emily hated that.
But law moved on paper, not adrenaline.
Paul opened another folder.
“There’s something else.”
Inside was a photocopy of an invoice.
A private investigator had billed Serena Vale for “subject monitoring.”
The date was ten years earlier.
Three years before Emily met Nathan.
Subject initials:
E.C.B.
Emily went numb.
“She hired someone to follow me.”
Paul nodded.
“How did Dad get this?”
“We never determined that. It appeared in Catherine’s file after Serena was fired.”
Emily looked at the surveillance photograph from Suite 1908 on her phone.
Same years.
Same pattern.
The private investigator had not been Nathan.
But Nathan eventually possessed the work.
“Who was the investigator?”
“Agency was called Mercer Lane Investigations.”
“Still operating?”
“No.”
Olivia studied the invoice.
“There’s a license number.”
Within an hour her investigator located the former agency owner.
His name was Victor Sloan.
He lived in Queens.
He refused to talk by phone.
That night, Emily returned to the townhouse she and Nathan had shared.
Nathan was gone.
His attorney had sent a message warning Emily not to dispose of marital property.
Emily ignored his bedroom.
She went straight to the safe where her mother’s necklace had been kept.
No forced entry.
Nathan had known the combination.
Of course he had.
Inside were other jewels, watches, and documents.
He had taken only the emerald necklace.
That mattered.
If his goal was simply to give Serena something expensive, he could have taken pieces worth more.
Why that necklace?
Emily searched old insurance photographs.
The pendant was oval, emerald surrounded by tiny diamonds.
On the back, beneath Catherine Bennett’s initials, was a nearly invisible engraving.
77–19
Emily stared.
Account 7719.
Not an account.
A clue.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
A woman whispered, “Stop looking for the box.”
Emily stood.
“Who is this?”
“You already know too much.”
“Serena?”
The caller laughed softly.
Not Serena.
Then the line went dead.
Emily immediately sent the number to Olivia.
Moments later the townhouse alarm chimed.
Someone had entered through the basement service door.
Emily froze.
She called 911.
Footsteps sounded below.
She locked herself inside the study.
A drawer opened downstairs.
Then another.
Whoever had entered was searching.
Not attacking.
Searching.
Police sirens approached.
The intruder fled before officers arrived.
Nothing obvious had been stolen.
Until Emily returned to the safe.
The jewelry remained.
The documents remained.
But the velvet box where Catherine’s emerald necklace had rested was gone.
May you like
And tucked beneath the empty space was a message written on Bennett Meridian stationery.
THE NECKLACE OPENS MORE THAN A BANK BOX.
