“Sit down, Grant!” she hissed, but her partner was already moving toward the door, suddenly very eager to distance himself from a potential federal investigation.
Marvin placed a pen on the table, rolling it gently until it stopped right in front of Paula. Beside it, he laid a simple two-page document—the full renunciation of rights.
“You have until five o’clock today to sign,” Marvin said professionally. “If you sign, you leave Ravenport with your freedom, though without a single cent of Elliot’s estate. If you do not sign, or if you attempt to contest this, the filing will proceed, and my firm will personally deliver the evidence packet to the federal courthouse tomorrow morning.”
Paula looked down at the pen. Her face was pale, the designer coat suddenly looking less like a symbol of wealth and more like a costume for a role she could no longer play. She looked up at me one last time, searching for a trace of the confused sixteen-year-old girl she had abandoned on a curb eighteen years ago.
She found nothing but cold steel.
Without a word, she snatched the pen, signed her name across the bottom lines with violent, jagged strokes, and tossed the pen onto the table. She grabbed her handbag, turned on her heel, and hurried out of the conference room, her heels clicking a sharp, panicked rhythm down the hallway.
The heavy door swung shut behind her.
Marvin carefully picked up the signed document, inspected the signature, and blew gently on the wet ink before slid it into his briefcase. He turned off the digital recorder with a quiet click.
“She won’t come back,” Marvin said, looking at me over his glasses.
“I know,” I replied, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the dark Atlantic ocean below. “She only goes where she thinks she can take something.”
“The estate is yours, Morgan. All of it. Black Harbor, the house on the cliffs, the patents. Elliot left you the tools to secure your future. What do you plan to do now?”
I stood up, buttoning my jacket, feeling the deep, absolute quiet of the room settling into my bones. The ghosts were finally gone.
“I plan to go to work,” I said.
