Something softened in her gaze. A degree of the hostility she’d carried around him easing up. “I’m glad.”
I was, too. I also trusted him enough now to explain everything he’d asked to know about what I remembered of that night.
Conversation in the room continued, Genevieve and Everly talking with Lovelyn about an update to the police activity.
I rifled through the papers on the table. One was a schedule, the number three drawn in the corner.
I picked it up. “What’s this?”
Mila did that same cute nose wrinkle that I was quickly learning showed her discomfort. “The solicitor’s calendar for all the Marchant business. We don’t need to pay attention to that.”
I traced a finger from one date to the next. The three referred to the number of days until the vote on the family business. There was a will reading alongside that.
“It’s out of date anyway,” she added.
Cassie snorted indelicately. “Yeah, considering Sullivan signed his own death warrant and took himself out of the equation.”
I looked between them. “Meaning?”
Mila bit her lip and glanced away.
I touched her arm. “Please? I want to know.”
“The vote can’t happen. Sullivan Property Solutions can’t provide their voter, and the rules are that they only have one nominated person, so the solicitors are in freefall. They don’t have a backup for the failed backup plan. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing for you to be concerned about.”
There was tension in her tone. She was worried about scaring me. It was fine. The wind-up of the company was far from my radar. If I kept that in mind, I felt completely safe from the whole saga.
I carefully set the calendar sheet down.
Mila followed the movement. “Do you know how the trusted companies started, if that was operating when you were there?”
I nodded, and Lovelyn moved in to listen.
“Our grandfather, Austin, had a health scare which put him in hospital for a week. His heart.” I touched my chest.
Mila paled but nodded. “That’s what took his life in the end. He drank pretty much every night and ignored the doctors telling him to stop.”
“My enduring memory is of him with a glass of whisky in his hand, or rum, if he was down on the docks and talking to ships’ captains.”
She gave a soft, sad laugh. “Same. I can’t even smell spirits without summoning his office.”
“When he came out of hospital, he had the solicitors around for meetings, then told me how he had put measures in place in case anything happened to him. It was then he told me I had siblings.” I swallowed a hit of sadness. “The news didn’t sting at that point. I was excited. It was only later that I resented how he’d told me for his purposes, not mine. Anyway, he explained his close working relationship with those business owners. All four agreed to help each other in the same way if the worst happened. They already had joint ventures, so it made sense for them to support each other. I guess they didn’t anticipate this.”
Cassie cocked her head. “So he gave five votes to family, and one vote to be shared among his friends should a family member abstain and there be a tie?”
I nodded, because that was pretty much it.
“If ye want it over, we can just kidnap another trusted company person. Make the vote even again? That way the company can just fold and die.”
Cassie said it the way other people suggested ordering a takeaway, but Mila burst out in a sob and rushed from the room.
The rest of us stared after her.
Cassie stood. “Ah fuck. I’ll go after her.”
I climbed to my feet. “Let me?”
In Cassie’s guest bathroom, Mila perched on the side of the tub, her fair hair falling over her face.
