Chapter 3 - FLORA REMEMBERS
Flora asked to resign.
Not because she had done anything wrong.
Because she had spent eleven years learning that being noticed inside a Ricci conflict was dangerous.
“I have a sister in Vermont,” she told me. “I could go.”
“You can.”
She looked surprised.
“I’m not firing you.”
“I know.”
“If you want to leave, the household will honor your contract and transition housing.”
She stared at me for a moment.
Then said, “Mrs. Bianca would have liked that answer.”
I felt strangely wounded.
“What answers did she dislike?”
“When people said, ‘You’re family, so you have to stay.’”
That sounded like Mother.
Flora remained temporarily because investigators and our auditors needed her recollections. She insisted on independent counsel paid through a neutral employee legal fund, not directly by me.
Good.
Then she told us what happened during Bianca’s final year.
Mother had ovarian cancer. The family knew she was ill; fewer people knew she spent the last six months auditing the Ricci Heritage Collection from bed. Portia had taken over the foundation’s cultural-property committee because Cedric was occupied with a refinancing crisis and I was running the western hotel expansion.
Mother became suspicious after an ivory-inlaid writing desk returned from restoration with different wear marks beneath one drawer.
She said nothing publicly.
Instead she started marking objects.
R-1.
R-2.
R-14.
Twenty-three in total.
Flora photographed them.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” I asked.
“She said she needed proof first.”
That hurt.
I had always considered myself the person Mother would call first.
Apparently I had been thirty-four, traveling constantly, convinced every family problem could be delegated.
Then Flora remembered the vase.
“Mrs. Bianca moved it herself once.”
“With cancer?”
“With me helping.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to look beneath the cabinet.”
The cabinet had a false bottom.
We found it that afternoon.
Empty except for dust and the outline of something rectangular.
The envelope had not simply fallen there accidentally.
It had been deliberately concealed.
Then Cedric admitted he knew Bianca suspected inventory problems.
Not the extent.
“She thought Portia’s restoration vendors were sloppy.”
“Why didn’t you investigate?”
“We were two days from violating a bank covenant.”
That phrase would become important.
“What does an art inventory have to do with a bank covenant?”
“Nothing.”
“Then you ignored her.”
Cedric’s jaw tightened.
“I prioritized the company.”
Mother died three months later.
Portia remained in charge of the collection.
No independent audit occurred.
I asked Cedric whether he remembered Blackthorn.
He shook his head.
Then hesitated.
“What?”
“There was a lender.”
My attention sharpened.
“Blackthorn Capital?”
“Maybe. Years ago. Distressed-credit outfit.”
“Did Ricci borrow from them?”
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
Cedric stood.
“I need old records.”
He left before explaining.
Portia watched him go.
Then said quietly, “You should leave this buried.”
I turned.
“Why?”
“Because Mother was sick. She became suspicious of everyone.”
“Was the vase fake?”
Silence.
“Were other objects replaced?”
Silence.
“Who owns Blackthorn?”
Her expression changed for less than a second.
Enough.
“You know,” I said.
Portia picked up her handbag.
“Knowing a name is not the same as knowing what your mother thought it meant.”
Then she left.
That night Marcus called.
Cedric had found Blackthorn in records from nine years earlier.
The firm had purchased a portion of Ricci Hospitality’s distressed debt during the exact month my mother hid the envelope.
Blackthorn had never foreclosed.
Never sued.
Never appeared publicly.
May you like
It simply accumulated debt quietly.
And nobody in our current finance department could tell us who its ultimate owner had been.
