All Chapters of The Heir Behind Bars: Chapter 401
- Chapter 410
412 chapters
Chapter 401
The fluorescent lights in the rented office space hummed with a persistent buzz that Nathan had stopped noticing two hours ago. He stood beside the conference table, his hand resting on one of seven cardboard boxes that lined the room’s perimeter like silent witnesses. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Riverpoint’s financial district stretched into the gray afternoon, all steel and glass and ambition. Inside, the air felt different. Heavier. Charged with the weight of months of investigation compressed into manila folders and document sleeves.Marjorie Hayes sat across from him, though “sat” was generous. She’d collapsed into the leather chair sometime around the third box of evidence, her designer silk blouse now wrinkled at the collar, the perfect cream fabric creased where she’d been gripping it. Her makeup, always so carefully applied, had begun to smudge beneath her eyes. Nathan wondered if she’d touched her face without realizing it, or if the foundation simply couldn’t hold
Chapter 402
The coffee had gone cold in Nathan’s mug, a film forming on the surface that caught the light from the small television mounted on the wall of his quarters. He’d been staring at the screen for twenty minutes, watching the same footage loop over and over. Marjorie Hayes, impeccably dressed even in crisis, being guided into the back of a police car. Her hand shielding her face. Reporters shouting questions that blurred into incomprehensible noise. The chyron at the bottom of the screen scrolling past in bold letters: “Hayes Family Matriarch Arrested for Embezzlement - Millions Missing.”Nathan had expected it. He’d known the moment Diane made that phone call yesterday that the news would spread like wildfire. The Hayes name carried weight in Riverpoint, and watching it burn made for good television. Still, seeing it play out in real time, seeing reporters dissect his family on morning news programs while talking heads speculated about the full extent of the damage, made something twist
Chapter 403
The Hayes corporate headquarters occupied forty-three floors of steel and glass in the heart of Riverpoint’s financial district, a monument to old money pretending to be modern. Cassandra had been inside the building dozens of times, had attended charity galas in the penthouse ballroom and dinner meetings in the executive dining room, but she’d never felt the weight of it quite like this. The elevator climbed with smooth efficiency, the numbers ticking upward while her reflection stared back at her from the polished doors.Navy suit, tailored perfectly. Hair pulled back in a style her mother would have called severe. Makeup minimal, professional. She looked like someone who belonged in a boardroom, which was exactly the point. Looking the part was half the battle in rooms like these.The other half was having the spine to stay standing when everyone else wanted you to sit down and shut up.The elevator chimed as it reached the fortieth floor, and the doors slid open to reveal the exec
Chapter 404
The call came at seven-fifteen, just as the sun was setting and painting the sky over Riverpoint in shades of orange and bruised purple. Nathan had been sitting on the edge of his bed in the maid’s quarters, staring at his phone like he could will it to give him good news. When it finally rang, Joe’s name appearing on the screen, he’d felt a flutter of something like hope.That lasted about five seconds.“Nathan.” Joe’s voice came through rough, strained in a way Nathan had never heard before. The foreman was usually all gravel and confidence, barking orders on the job site with the kind of authority that came from thirty years of hard work. Now he sounded tired. Worried. “You got a minute?”Nathan’s stomach dropped. “Yeah. What’s wrong?”A pause. Nathan could hear ambient noise in the background—traffic, maybe, or the hum of a bar. Somewhere public. Joe was calling from somewhere public, which meant he didn’t want this conversation overheard by the wrong people.“Had a visitor today,
Chapter 405
The trial date came through on a Tuesday: June fifteenth, still three months away. Nathan saw it first on the news ticker scrolling across the bottom of a television screen in a hardware store, standing in line with a cart full of drywall supplies while the clerk rang up the customer ahead of him. The media had latched onto Marjorie’s case with the fervor of sharks scenting blood, dissecting every detail, every revelation, every connection to Riverpoint’s wealthy elite. Reporters camped outside the Hayes estate. Camera crews haunted the financial district. Everyone wanted a statement, a reaction, a glimpse of the family crumbling.Nathan gave them nothing. He had better things to do.The building Marcus had agreed to let him work on sat on Brennan Street, in a neighborhood where most investors wouldn’t bother slowing down their cars. Three stories of brick gone gray with neglect, windows boarded with plywood that had itself been tagged with graffiti in overlapping layers of spray pain
Chapter 406
The Sterling family charity gala was the kind of event that defined Riverpoint’s social calendar, held annually in the grand ballroom of the Meridian Hotel with its crystal chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Women wore gowns that cost more than cars. Men wore tuxedos tailored so precisely they looked like second skins. The champagne flowed in rivers, the hors d’oeuvres circulated on silver platters, and everyone who mattered in Riverpoint’s elite circles found a reason to attend.Cassandra had been coming to this gala since she was sixteen, had learned to navigate its social currents the way sailors learned to read stars. She knew which conversations mattered and which were merely performance. She knew who held real power and who just pretended to. She knew how to smile and nod and make people feel important while revealing nothing of substance about herself.Tonight, she stood near the bar in a midnight blue gown that her mother had called understated and
Chapter 407
The café sat on the edge of Riverpoint’s industrial district, in one of those transitional neighborhoods where warehouses were slowly being converted into lofts and old factory buildings housed artisan coffee roasters and craft breweries. It was the kind of place where people minded their own business, where the clientele consisted mostly of freelancers with laptops and shift workers grabbing breakfast before heading home. Far enough from the financial district that Nathan didn’t expect to run into anyone who mattered. Far enough from the Hayes estate that Cassandra could arrive without being noticed.Nathan pushed through the door at ten past nine, the bell above chiming softly. The café smelled like espresso and fresh pastries, warmth against the morning chill outside. He spotted Cassandra immediately, seated at a corner table by the window where she could watch the street. She’d arrived early, which didn’t surprise him. Cassandra Sterling didn’t show up anywhere without knowing the
Chapter 408
Nathan spread the financial records across the small desk in his quarters, the pages overlapping like pieces of a puzzle he was finally beginning to see whole. The lamp he’d borrowed from the estate’s storage cast harsh light across columns of numbers and transaction codes, turning the cramped space into something between a war room and a confessional. Outside, Riverpoint had gone dark hours ago, the estate settling into the quiet that came after midnight, but Nathan’s mind was too wired for sleep.He’d started with the bank statements, working chronologically from oldest to newest. Liam’s primary account showed the expected patterns at first: salary deposits from Hayes Holdings, regular transfers to investment portfolios, charges at restaurants and hotels and retailers that catered to people with more money than sense. Normal wealthy heir spending, nothing remarkable.Then Nathan reached the month before his DUI arrest, and the patterns changed.A withdrawal for fifteen thousand doll
Chapter 409
The detectives arrived at the Hayes estate on a Tuesday morning, just after breakfast service had been cleared. Nathan heard about it from Maria, who’d been polishing silver in the dining room when two plainclothes officers were escorted through by Mr. Hayes’s personal assistant. She’d rushed to his quarters afterward, her eyes wide with the kind of gossip that spread through staff like wildfire, telling him in hushed tones about the badges and the briefcases and the way Mr. Hayes’s face had gone pale when they’d asked to speak with Liam.The investigation moved with the kind of speed that money usually prevented. Anonymous tips flooded the financial crimes division, each one pointing investigators toward specific accounts, specific transactions, specific irregularities in Liam Hayes’s financial history. Nathan had provided his evidence to Diane, who’d forwarded it to the appropriate authorities through proper legal channels. But someone else was feeding the investigation too, someone
Chapter 410
Nathan set down his paintbrush carefully, the bristles making a soft sound against the edge of the paint tray. His jaw tightened as he processed what Cassandra had just said, the words hanging in the air between them like something physical and dangerous.“What exactly did he say?” Nathan’s voice came out controlled, but Cassandra could hear the tension underneath.She moved further into the room, her heels clicking against the concrete floor that still needed its final polish. The space around them smelled like fresh paint and sawdust, clean scents that felt incongruous with the conversation they were about to have.“He cornered me in the parking garage after the meeting with his father,” Cassandra said, choosing her words carefully. “Waited until I was alone, until there weren’t any witnesses. Very calculated.”Nathan’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “And?”“He said that if I didn’t reconsider my loyalty to the Hayes family, he’d make sure my family suffered the consequences.