Grant recognized his friend’s voice.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Your boys are with me, and nothing’s happened to them yet.”
“Russell, if you hurt them…”
“Shut up and listen. Your ex-wife took a flash drive with the original records for the North Tower project. I’ve been looking for it for five years.”
Natalie began to shake.
“What does that have to do with my children?”
Russell laughed.
“You know exactly where you hid it, Natalie. You always were good with a needle and thread.”
Grant looked at the teddy bear Eli had left behind in the children’s lounge.
Natalie put a hand over her mouth.
Beneath the black stitching on the toy’s belly lay the secret she had guarded for five years.
And now Russell was ready to use her own children to get it.
PART 3
“You have twenty minutes,” Russell said over the phone. “After that, I won’t answer for what happens.”
Grant gripped the receiver so hard his knuckles turned white.
“What exactly do you want?”
“The original drive. No fake copies, and no police. Natalie brings it to the old ballroom in the east wing. Alone.”
“Russell, they’re five-year-old boys.”
“And you’re a man with a lot to lose. Don’t complicate things.”
The call ended.
Natalie stood frozen, hugging Eli’s teddy bear.
“Give it to me,” Grant said.
“No.”
“Natalie, we need to know what’s on it.”
She looked at him, eyes full of tears.
“Five years ago you took everything from me because you trusted a folder full of lies. This drive was the only thing that could prove I was telling the truth.”
With a pair of small scissors she’d asked for at the front desk, she carefully opened a seam on the toy.
She pulled out a flash drive wrapped in plastic.
“I found out someone was siphoning money from the construction of the hotel. There were fake invoices, nonexistent vendors, and transfers that ended up in accounts controlled by Russell. When I started investigating, those photographs of my supposed lover appeared.”
Grant shivered.
“The man at the restaurant?”
“He was an accountant helping me review the transactions. Russell turned him into my lover and forged messages so you’d believe it.”
Natalie took a deep breath.
“There was more than two million dollars involved, Grant. I’d saved copies of the original books before they altered the records. First I hid the drive among my belongings. Then, when the boys were born, I sewed it inside the bear I made for Eli.”
“Why didn’t you ever report it?”
“I did. But without access to the original servers, the investigation went nowhere. My lawyer advised me to hold on to the evidence. Then people started following me. I moved twice. My priority stopped being getting the hotel back. It was protecting our sons.”
That last sentence shattered him.
While Grant had been celebrating deals and traveling with Courtney, Natalie had raised two little boys alone, working as a freelance designer and living in fear that someone would find that evidence.
But there was no time for regret now.
Grant called Diane Park, the attorney who had stood by Natalie all those years. He asked her to hand the digital copies over to the Travis County District Attorney’s office immediately and to report the boys’ abduction.
Diane confirmed she still had backups of the records and said she would request police intervention.
Then Grant went back to the cameras.
Russell had taken the boys toward the old wing, a section closed for renovations.
Frank, the head of security, had vanished from his post.
“He’s involved too,” Grant murmured.
That was when he understood that for years he had handed the keys to his company to the very people who were destroying it.
Courtney was sitting in the conference room when Grant returned.
When she saw him, she dropped her purse.
“Russell took the boys,” he said. “And you’re going to tell me everything.”
Courtney started to cry.
Six years earlier, her mother had needed an expensive operation. Russell had paid over twenty-five thousand dollars to help her.
Then he asked for a small favor: to let him look at the emails and documents that came into Grant’s office.
Then another.
And another.
Until Courtney ended up helping to forge the evidence against Natalie.
“I didn’t know he was going to destroy your marriage,” she sobbed.
“You put those photographs on my desk!”
“Because Russell threatened to turn me in for the transfers I’d authorized! And then… then I started to have feelings for you.”
Grant looked at her with deep contempt.
“And that’s why you hid that I was going to be a father?”
Courtney lowered her head.
“When that letter came, I steamed it open to read it. I saw the ultrasound. I knew they were twins.”
Grant had to brace himself against the table.
“So you knew.”
“Yes.”
“For five years you listened to me talk about having kids someday, knowing I already had two?”
Courtney began to tremble.
“I was afraid of losing you.”
Grant stepped back.
“You never loved me, Courtney. You wanted to keep the life you’d gotten by taking another woman’s.”
She had no answer.
Finally she confessed one more thing.
She was the one who had sent the anonymous package to Natalie. She had discovered that Russell was preparing to destroy the files for good and wanted to force Grant to face the truth. She’d thought that in a hotel full of people, the boys would be safe.
“It was stupid,” she admitted. “I never imagined Russell would dare take them.”
“Your intentions aren’t enough anymore. Now you have to help us find them.”
Courtney raised her eyes.
“I know a hallway that leads to the old ballroom. Russell uses it to get in without showing up on the cameras.”
They went down a maintenance stairwell.
At the end was a metal door that connected to the old office of Grant’s father.
Walter Holloway had started construction of the hotel but died a few months before it opened.
Russell had been his trusted partner.
He had also been the one who organized Walter’s funeral and held Grant up when he was crushed by the loss.
Courtney opened the door with a key Russell had given her years before.
Inside were a few old pieces of furniture, a photograph of Walter, and a built-in safe.
“Russell never managed to open it,” Courtney explained. “Your father kept his personal documents in here.”
Grant remembered that Walter had used a combination of five numbers from his birth date and one special number only the two of them knew.
He tried it.
The lock clicked open.
Inside were an old recording, several bank statements, and a letter addressed to him.
He recognized his father’s handwriting immediately.
Son, if you’re reading this, it’s probably too late to warn you in person.
Grant felt his chest tighten.
Russell has been stealing from our companies. I found out three months ago. He begged me for another chance, and I agreed because I’ve known his family for so many years.
But he did it again. I’ve prepared these documents to give to the authorities if he doesn’t pay back the money. I don’t want you to mistake my affection for him as a guarantee that he’s an honest man.
Grant had to stop.
The last line was underlined.
Never be afraid to check the truth, son. Real love can withstand questions. A lie needs nobody to ask them.
“It’s exactly what Natalie begged me for five years ago,” Grant whispered.
Courtney examined the statements.
The first fraudulent transfers predated Walter’s death.
And the recording held a conversation in which Russell admitted using company money for personal ventures.
“Your father was going to report him,” Courtney said.
Grant remembered his father’s last days.
Walter had suffered severe headaches and died unexpectedly. Russell had been the one to insist it was a health problem nobody could have foreseen.
Grant had no proof to accuse him of anything else.
But he was beginning to suspect the betrayal was far older than he’d imagined.
Suddenly they heard voices on the other side of a ventilation grate.
“Give me the drive, Natalie.”
It was Russell.
“Let my sons go first.”
Behind a filing cabinet, Grant found a narrow door.
The passage led to the ballroom where the boys were.
He crept forward, crouching, with Courtney behind him.
Through an opening he saw Owen and Eli sitting together on a pair of chairs. Both were frightened but unharmed.
