All Chapters of Mistaken Alliances : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Elena Vasquez proposed to Killian in Barcelona. I heard about it the way you hear most things involving Killian. He called me before he called anyone else, including his brother, which told me something about where things had settled between the three of us. "She proposed," he said, his voice doing something I had never heard it do before. High and slightly disbelieving and entirely delighted. "And you said?" I asked. "I burst into tears, apparently. Which she found very funny." A pause. "Then I said yes." "Killian." "I know." "I'm really happy for you," I said, and I meant it completely. "I'm terrified," he said. "Good," I said. "That means it's real." He laughed, and it was the Killian laugh, the full one that filled a room even through a phone speaker. He called Kade next. I listened from the kitchen doorway while Kade took the call in the living room, watched the set of his back change, watched him turn and find me with his eyes. "Congratulations," he tol

I drove to the Upper East Side. Not to the brownstone. To Eloise's townhouse. I sat outside in the car for a full ten minutes before I went to the door. She answered it herself. She always did. She took one look at my face and stepped aside. We sat in the room with the books and the silver photographs, the room where she had poured tea and told me that she had kept me secret to protect me, and I put Harriet Cross's account on the table between us. Eloise looked at it. She did not pick it up. Then she looked at me. "There are things about that night that I have not told anyone," she said. "Not Madden. Not Kade." I waited. "The attack was meant for Killian," she said. "You know that. But I also know who ordered it. I have known since shortly after it happened." She folded her hands in her lap. "A man named Forsythe. He was a business rival of Madden's at the time, since gone abroad, his company dissolved. He used the attack as a pressure play." "And you were there th

The sister's name was Catherine.I found out about her in stages. First through Eloise, who mentioned her carefully over a Sunday lunch three weeks after the confession. Then through Kade, who had apparently decided that understanding the full scope of that night meant understanding every person in it. And finally through a letter.It arrived in Eloise's name but addressed to me as well. Two pages of neat handwriting from a woman in Provence who had spent eight years carrying her part of a story that nobody else knew she was in.Catherine wrote that she had followed our family in the press. That she had known about me from the moment the Finance Chronicle interview ran. That she had wanted to write for months and had not known how to begin.She wrote about working for Forsythe's company. About realizing within the first year that the man was building something that would eventually hurt people beyond his immediate orbit. About going to her sister, Eloise, and the agreement they had ma

The call came from a number I didn't recognize on a Thursday morning in October.I was at my desk, deep in a regulatory filing that had been making my life difficult for a week, when my mobile rang. I picked up without looking, expecting it to be Madeline or one of the senior partners."Is this Mia Carter?" A woman's voice. Low and careful."Who's calling?" I asked."My name is Forsythe," she said. "Annalise Forsythe. I believe you know my father's name."I went very still.Forsythe. The man who had ordered the attack at the river. The business rival of Madden Carter who had been gone for years, his company dissolved."I'm listening," I said carefully."I'm calling because my father is dying," she said. "He has been abroad for seven years. He is ill and he has been telling me things. Things I was not aware of." A pause. "I found your name in his correspondence. And your husband's.""What kind of correspondence?" I asked."There is more to the river incident than a business rivalry," s

The Sorel arrest made news in the financial pages on Saturday. By Monday it was in the broader press. Carter Group's stock dipped on Monday morning, a nervous market reflex, and recovered by Wednesday when the company put out a clear, factual statement.Madden issued a personal statement acknowledging his thirty-year association with Sorel and his complete cooperation with the investigation. It was brief and dignified. He wrote it himself. Eloise told me this later. He had sat at his desk for three hours and written five drafts.The investment community, by and large, responded well. Not warmly, exactly, markets don't do warmth, but with the considered respect of people who recognized that a company leadership had handled a serious revelation without flinching.I spent the week managing the litigation fallout and doing approximately fifteen media interviews, all controlled, all brief, all pointing back to the statement. Kade handled the investor relationships. Killian, from Barcelona,