Chapter 15 - ELAINE ROLLINS
Elaine Rollins lived in a house designed to look honest.
Old money brick.
Soft landscaping.
No guards visible.
Nothing loud.
The kind of house a woman chooses when she wants the world to believe all her power is social rather than financial.
Nora got an emergency order by eight that evening permitting us to serve preservation demands and attempt contact. I went with the process server and a retired investigator named Ben Kessler because there are moments when staying home becomes impossible.
Elaine opened the door herself.
She was beautiful in a disciplined, almost severe way, age carried like architecture rather than decline.
Her eyes moved from the server to the investigator to me and stopped.
“Elena.”
So she had expected this eventually.
“Where’s Serena?”
“She is resting.”
“Where?”
“In a place where Julian can’t reach her.”
“Then let me see her.”
“No.”
The server handed over the preservation order.
Elaine glanced at it once. “You’re late.”
The words chilled me.
“Late for what?”
“For understanding that Julian was never the real beginning of this.”
Ben Kessler shifted beside me. “Ma’am, if Ms. Rollins has evidence relevant to ongoing proceedings, withholding it exposes—”
“I know exactly what it exposes,” she cut in. Then she looked only at me. “Your father believed money could solve parentage. He was wrong. It solved silence. Silence grows teeth.”
I did not step over the threshold. I wanted to.
Instead I kept my voice level. “Did you know Julian and Serena continued after the test?”
A flicker, nothing more. “Yes.”
That admission should have shattered something in me. Instead it clarified. Another adult in a long line of adults who preferred containment over honesty.
“And you still helped them?”
“I helped Serena survive what your father created.”
“By helping Julian drug my brother and steal Harbor?”
Her jaw tightened. “I did not help him drug anyone.”
“Did you help him hide the dock witness?”
Silence.
Enough.
Then she said, “Serena has the flash drive because Julian would destroy her if he got it first.”
“Then give her to me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if Serena testifies now without every copy of every file, Julian will paint her as a panicked lover. If she appears with the full history, he becomes what he is.”
I stared at her.
For one irrational second I believed her. Or half believed her.
Then Ben got a text and looked up.
“Ms. Vance.”
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
Harbor’s interim monitor had just flagged a second attempted action—not a wire transfer this time, but a scheduled midnight board consent packet authorizing emergency refinancing against the Harbor campus under a clause Julian had slipped into a dormant debt facility six months earlier.
He was trying to lever the property before we finished exposing him.
I looked back at Elaine.
“If Serena really wants protection, tell her this: she has until midnight to hand over every file.”
Elaine held my gaze.
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then I stop seeing her as a frightened woman and start seeing her as a co-author.”
I walked away before she could answer.
At 11:37 p.m., with Harbor’s refinancing packet minutes from taking effect unless blocked, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
May you like
It was Serena.
And all she said was, “I have the full marina video. But if I give it to you, Julian will tell Adrian what happened in Boston.”
