Chapter 5 - The Audit and the Accomplice
By sunset, the Belmont estate had returned to a strange, heavy kind of peace.
The frantic decorators Brooke had hired were turned away at the front gates. The custom wedding invitations were already sitting in a shredder in the basement, and the media storm that Dominic’s PR team had carefully preempted was quietly buried under a flurry of standard corporate press releases announcing the "mutual cancellation" of the wedding due to irreconcilable personal differences.
In the second-floor study, Dominic sat behind his massive mahogany desk, reviewing the preliminary forensic audit Julian Parker had just handed him.
Emma stood near the window, watching the rain begin to trace long, gray streaks across the glass.
"It goes deeper than Brooke," Julian said, adjusting his glasses as he pointed to a highlighted line on the ledger. "Miss Harrington didn't draft those trust amendments alone. Her brother’s firm was working in tandem with someone inside our own financial department. Someone with direct access to your mother’s legacy portfolio."
Dominic looked up, his eyes dark. "Who?"
"Marcus Vance," Julian admitted grimly. "Your senior vice president of asset management. He approved the preliminary title transfer on the east cottage three weeks ago, logging it as a routine administrative adjustment."
Dominic leaned back in his leather chair, tapping a fountain pen rhythmically against the wood. "Marcus has been with me for ten years. His daughter plays with Natalie’s son on the weekends."
"Greed doesn't care about weekend playdates, Dominic," Emma noted quietly, turning away from the window. "Brooke promised him a directorship in the new Boston logistics merger once she controlled the Mercer real estate assets."
Dominic stood up, buttoning his suit jacket. "Call a full emergency board meeting for eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Have security lock Marcus out of his terminal tonight, and escort him off the premises before he has a chance to wipe his hard drives."
Julian nodded grimly and exited the study, leaving Dominic and Emma alone in the quiet warmth of the room.
The silence stretched between them for a long moment, filled only by the crackle of the fireplace and the steady patter of the rain outside.
Dominic walked over to the desk, picked up a fresh cup of coffee Emma had brought in earlier, and took a slow sip. He looked at her—really looked at her—not as an employee, not as a witness, but as the person who had quietly held the family together while everyone else was looking the other way.
"You risked your job this morning," Dominic said quietly. "If Brooke had won that argument, you would have been out on the street without a reference."
"I wasn't worried about the reference," Emma replied, meeting his gaze with a faint, steady smile. "I was worried about the coffee cups. She kept breaking the good china."
A genuine laugh—deep, warm, and entirely free of the cold edge that usually defined him—broke through Dominic’s expression. He stepped closer, closing the distance between them until he was standing right beside her chair.
"You saved my family twice today, Emma," Dominic murmured, his voice softening. "First by answering my call when I was four thousand miles away, and second by standing your ground when she tried to intimidate you."
"I just did my job, Mr. Mercer," Emma said, though her heart did a strange, unexpected flutter beneath her blouse.
"No," Dominic corrected softly, reaching out to gently brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "From now on, your job title in this house is changing. I need an executive chief of staff—someone who knows every ledger, every secret, and every snake in the grass."
Emma looked up into his dark, intense eyes, seeing the quiet promise of a future built on loyalty rather than lies.
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"Does that come with a raise?" she asked with a dry, teasing smile.
Dominic’s smile widened, rich with satisfaction. "Double. And immunity from breaking the good china."
