Chapter 12 - The Shadow in SavannahI stood beside the workbench, scanning the legal document Julian Mercer had handed me.
The signature at the bottom of the deed was a terrifying sight. It was my name—Eleanor Vance—written in a fluid, confident hand that looked almost identical to my own. But I knew with absolute certainty that I had never signed a single paper regarding a property in Savannah.
"Mark forged this," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
"Mark is in a maximum-security federal facility with restricted communications," Julian replied, leaning against the edge of an empty display case. "He couldn't have filed this document from his cell. Which means he had an accomplice outside who had access to his old records, his notary seals, and your forged signature templates."
"Chloe Montgomery?" I suggested. "She’s in prison too."
"Chloe had associates," Julian said grimly. "When the federal authorities swept her accounts, they missed a silent partner—a man named Thomas Sterling. No relation to your business name, purely a coincidence. Sterling is an offshore asset liquidator who specializes in cleaning up dead real estate fraud schemes."
I sank into my wooden desk chair, rubbing my temples. "Why would Mark hide a small house in Savannah? He had millions flowing through Atlanta and Baltimore."
"Because it wasn't bought as an investment," Julian said. He pulled out a second sheet of paper—a faded property tax assessment from 2014. "The property is a modest cottage on the outskirts of the historic district. But according to old bank wire logs I unsealed yesterday, Arthur Bennett—your late father-in-law—transferred $200,000 into that exact parcel’s holding account thirty-five years ago, just before he died."
I looked up, stunned. "Arthur?"
"Arthur Bennett built the original foundation of your family trust," Julian reminded me softly. "It appears Arthur had his own secrets, Ms. Vance. Secrets that your late mother-in-law, Margaret, may have deliberately kept out of the rosewood box she left you."
My hand instinctively drifted to my neck, feeling the cool shape of the silver key beneath my silk scarf.
Margaret had given me the key to the rosewood box in her bedroom closet. She had handed me the keys to the Atlanta trust and the Swiss accounts. But had she left a piece of the puzzle behind?
May you like
"What's inside the Savannah house?" I asked.
Julian Mercer met my gaze with an unblinking, serious expression. "That’s what Thomas Sterling is trying to find out. His men are scheduled to clear out the house for 'renovation' this Friday. If you want to know what your husband and his father were hiding down there, we have less than forty-eight hours to beat them to it."
