“Yes.”
The answer was so simple that Bailey almost missed its force.
Her fingers went numb around the ledger.
“How long did you know?”
“I knew she had concerns.”
“How long?”
“Several months.”
“And you told me nothing.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I was her daughter.”
“You were a child.”
“I stopped being a child the morning you sent a secretary to tell me she was dead.”
Alaric winced.
It was slight, but real.
Bailey remembered that morning with terrible clarity. The blue curtains in her bedroom. The untouched breakfast tray. Her father’s secretary standing beside the door with a folded handkerchief and eyes that would not meet hers.
There had been no embrace from Alaric.
No explanation.
Only a funeral arranged like a business event, filled with men Bailey did not know and women who praised Evelyn’s elegance.
She had believed her father’s coldness meant grief.
Now she wondered whether it had meant fear.
Stefan moved to a cabinet beside the fireplace and poured water into a glass.
He handed it to Bailey.
She nearly refused, then realized her throat had gone dry.
“Why give me the company?” she asked after drinking.
“Because the commission believes your father still owns it.”
Alaric turned sharply. “That was not our agreement.”
“The contract is the agreement.”
“You said you needed leverage.”
“I did.”
“You said nothing about transferring every voting share.”
“You didn’t read the pages.”
“You concealed the clause.”
“I placed it directly above your signature.”
Alaric stared at him.
For the first time, Bailey saw the shape of what had happened. Her father had not merely been careless. He had been confident. Confident that the deal would cost him only the daughter he had already decided was expendable.
That realization hurt more than the insults she had expected.
She set the glass down before her hand began to shake.
“Why me?” she asked Stefan. “And don’t tell me I’m the intelligent Smith. You don’t know me.”
“I know you corrected the Rotterdam route projections when you were nineteen.”
Bailey went still.
Those projections had been a stack of papers left in the library. She had found an error in the fuel calculations and sent an unsigned note to the company office.
No one had acknowledged it.
Stefan continued. “I know you warned your father against selling the North Wharf warehouse because the land beneath it was worth more than the building.”
Alaric’s face darkened.
“I know you discovered that three ships were being billed twice for maintenance by a firm partially owned by one of the commission’s members.”
Bailey stared at him.
“How?”
“Your mother kept copies of your letters.”
“My mother died before the maintenance invoices.”
“Yes.”
The word hung between them.
Bailey glanced at the black ledger.
“You said she kept them.”
Stefan did not answer immediately.
Alaric stepped forward. “Do not.”
Bailey turned.
“Do not what?”
Her father’s face had gone pale again.
Stefan reached into the inner pocket of his coat.
Slowly, he withdrew a small cream envelope.
Bailey recognized the handwriting before he handed it to her.
Her own name was written across the front.
Bailey.
The last stroke curved upward in the way she remembered.
Her mother’s handwriting.
She could not take it.
“When was this written?”
“Six weeks ago,” Stefan said.
Alaric closed his eyes.