Chapter 2: The Midnight Call
Manuel stood up slowly. He didn't offer Rosalie fake sympathy, and he didn't try to touch her. Instead, he walked over to the heavy velvet draperies, pulled them shut against the snowy courtyard below, and turned the brass deadbolt on the suite door.
"He miscalculated," Manuel said.
He pulled his cell phone from his tuxedo pocket and dialed a number from memory. He didn't call the police—his father's indictment had taught him that the local district attorney's office dined at Emmett Durham's table three nights a week.
"Who are you calling?" Rosalie asked, pulling a silk robe over her wounded back.
"The man who watched my father die in a federal holding cell," Manuel replied.
The line clicked open on the third ring.
"Nelson," a dry, gravelly voice answered. "It's two in the morning on your wedding night. Either you're drunk, or Emmett Durham finally made a mistake."
"He made a mistake, Arthur," Manuel said, looking directly at Rosalie. "I'm looking at a Northern Heritage vault key, series four-hundred. And I need a forensic title injunction drafted before the banks open on Monday."
Arthur Vance was eighty-one years old, a disbarred federal prosecutor who had spent the last decade operating out of a basement office in Saint Paul, hunting the financial trails that had destroyed the Nelson family.
"Series four-hundred?" Arthur's breath hitched over the line. "Nelson, Heritage Bank hasn't issued a series four-hundred box since 2014. That's a corporate escrow vault."
"It belonged to Lorelei Durham," Manuel said. "And Emmett's men tore Rosalie's bedroom apart looking for it three hours before the ceremony."
"Listen to me very carefully," Arthur said, the sound of papers shuffling rapidly in the background. "Emmett's lawyers filed a petition for emergency medical conservatorship in Hennepin County Court yesterday afternoon. They're planning to have you sign as the petitioning spouse at nine o'clock Monday morning. If you sign that document, Rosalie loses her civil rights permanently, and Emmett becomes the legal executor of the trust."
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Manuel looked at Rosalie. She was standing by the vanity, her posture straight despite the bleeding cut on her shoulder, watching him with the calm intensity of someone who had already survived the worst the world could offer.
"I'm not signing the petition, Arthur," Manuel said. "Prepare a counter-filing. We're going to the bank."
