Chapter 2 - The Audit of Nags Head
By six o'clock that evening, the grand brick house on Monument Avenue was completely empty of guests.
The caterers had packed away the untouched silver trays, the relatives had fled in a wave of nervous, hushed murmurs, and the dining room table had been cleared of the ruined lemon cake.
I sat in the formal library on the second floor, wearing one of Cole’s crisp white button-down shirts over a pair of dark jeans. My green silk dress was sitting in a plastic bag in the trunk of our car, waiting for a dry cleaner.
Cole sat beside me on the leather sofa, holding a steaming cup of tea he had made for me. Across the coffee table sat Lydia, looking small, pale, and thoroughly hollowed out.
Standing near the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves was Richard Vance—the Mercer family's longtime estate attorney, whom Cole had summoned to the house thirty minutes after the guests departed.
Richard adjusted his reading glasses, holding a blue leather binder containing the master documents for the Mercer Family Real Estate Trust.
"Cole, Elena," Richard spoke, his voice dry, measured, and entirely professional. "I have reviewed the trust filings executed by your mother over the last six months at Camille’s request."
Lydia covered her face with both hands, letting out a soft, trembling sigh. "Richard... please tell me I didn't do what I think I did."
"Lydia," Richard said gravely, looking over his spectacles at his client. "Four months ago, you executed an emergency amendment to the Nags Head Property Trust under the impression that Cole’s marriage represented an immediate financial risk to the estate. That amendment removed Cole as a co-trustee and designated Camille as the sole managing beneficiary upon your passing."
Cole leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "And what did Camille do with that authority, Richard?"
Richard pulled a second stack of documents from his briefcase—bank ledgers and title registry printouts from Dare County, North Carolina.
"Three weeks ago," Richard revealed, "Camille utilized her newly granted status as sole managing beneficiary to execute a $450,000 equity line of credit against the Nags Head property."
Lydia snapped her head up, her face going completely ghost-white. "A what?!"
"An equity loan," Richard repeated flatly. "She pledged the beach house as collateral to secure a commercial loan through a private lender in Charlotte."
"Why?" I asked, leaning forward beside Cole. "What was she doing with four hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"
Richard slid a financial statement across the glass table toward us.
"Camille’s fashion boutique in downtown Richmond—La Maison Mercer—has been operating at a massive loss for twenty-two months," Richard explained. "She owes over two hundred thousand dollars in back rent to her landlord, her suppliers in New York have placed her on credit hold, and she was served with a formal tax lien by the Commonwealth of Virginia six weeks ago."
Cole stared at the numbers on the paper. A bitter, disbelieving laugh escaped his lips.
"She wasn't trying to protect the family legacy from Elena," Cole said, his voice shaking with a dangerous mixture of anger and betrayal. "She was drowning in debt. She manufactured a crisis about Elena being a gold-digger so Mom would give her control of the beach house before her boutique went under."
Lydia sat frozen on the sofa. The arrogant, untouchable matriarch who had spent two years judging my clothes, my background, and my father’s repair shop looked down at the bank statements showing her own daughter's systematic fraud.
"She used me," Lydia whispered, tears finally welling in her eyes, ruining her pristine makeup. "My own daughter used me to steal from her brother."
"She didn't just use you, Lydia," I said softly, looking her dead in the eyes. "You let her. You were so eager to believe that a girl from Fredericksburg whose father fixes cars must be after your money that you swallowed every lie she fed you without asking for a single piece of proof."
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Lydia looked at me. For the first time since I had met her three years ago, she didn't have a sharp comeback. She didn't make a passive-aggressive comment about my university or my watch.
She simply looked at me with a face full of profound, humiliating defeat.
