Chapter 7 - The Bridal Suite
They did not go straight to the street. Arthur had taken a room on the fourth floor that morning—a modest standard room paid for with his own debit card, rejecting the lavish suite the Hendersons had booked for them.
Daniel carried his mother inside and set her gently down on the edge of the queen-sized bed.
The silence in the hotel room was profound, broken only by the hum of the air conditioner and Evelyn’s shallow, recovering breaths.
Daniel immediately went into the bathroom. He took a stack of white cotton towels, ran the tub with warm water, and brought a basin out to the bedroom.
He knelt on the carpet, took his mother’s swollen, dirt-encrusted foot in his hands, and gently immersed it in the water.
“Daniel, don't,” she protested softly, trying to pull back. “You’re in your wedding clothes. Let me do that.”
“Be quiet, Mom,” Daniel said gently, his tears finally breaking free, falling hot and heavy into the graying water. He used a washcloth to wipe away the dark river silt from her ankles, cleaning the cuts where the blackberry thorns had torn into her flesh. “Just let me take care of you.”
Arthur sat on the desk chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watching his son.
“What will you do about the firm, Daniel?” Arthur asked quietly. “Richard wasn't bluffing. He owns half the commercial paper in the county. He will make sure every door in this city is slammed in your face.”
Daniel wrung out the towel, wiping the dried mud from his mother’s shin.
“Let him slam them,” Daniel said, his voice cold, steady, and resolute. “I built their financial modeling system from scratch. I know where every account is held. I know which pension funds they leveraged to finance the Henderson tower. I don't need their references. I have my license, I have my brain, and I have my integrity.”
He looked up at his father. “What about the mill? The four hundred and eighty thousand?”
Arthur smiled, a deep, crinkly smile that reached his eyes for the first time in three weeks. He reached into his coat and pulled out a battered leather notebook.
“I didn't spend thirty-five years working this county without making friends, Danny,” Arthur said. “When Julian sent me that demand letter yesterday, I didn't go to a lawyer. I went to Thomas Vance.”
Daniel’s eyes widened. Thomas Vance was the founder of Vance Timber, the Henderson family’s fiercest and oldest competitor in the tri-state area.
“Vance bought the mortgage off the regional bank at four o'clock this afternoon,” Arthur said smoothly. “Paid them face value plus a five-percent premium just to get the Henderson name off the title deed. My debt isn't held by Julian anymore. It’s held by Tom Vance. And Tom gave me a ten-year note at two percent interest, on one condition.”
Daniel wiped his hands on a clean towel. “What condition?”
“That when you finally realized what kind of people the Hendersons were,” Arthur said with a twinkle in his eye, “you’d come manage his logistics portfolio. He’s been trying to hire you away from Richard for two years.”
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Evelyn let out a choked sound that was half-sob, half-laughter, reaching out to pull both men toward her in a fierce, clumsy embrace.
***
