The Billionaire Heir Called Me a Freeloader, I'd Bankrolled His Family for 600 Years novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The County Record

In front of Geoffrey's executives Eleanor pulls up the property record and finds a forged transfer of her land, witnessed by Richard Willoughby twenty-two days after his stroke.

Geoffrey's office was on the thirty-ninth floor, and its walls were glass.

I took the regular elevator, walked past his assistant and opened the door without knocking.

Eight executives sat around his table with coffee and laptops.

They stopped talking when they saw me.

Geoffrey looked up from the head of the table.

"Eleanor. We're in the middle of a meeting."

"Then they can hear this," I said.

I stayed in the doorway.

"The land under this tower belongs to me."

Nobody laughed. A few of them looked at their screens.

"I bought that plot a hundred and twenty years ago and signed the deed myself. The Group has leased it from me ever since."

Geoffrey leaned back.

"That plot has been Group property for as long as the Group has existed."

"It has been leased property for as long as the Group has existed. The rent is one dollar a year."

"I've never seen a lease."

"Your father has."

His jaw moved.

"My father had a stroke eleven weeks ago. He can't sign anything, and he can't speak for you."

"Then I'll bring the county's copy."

"Do that," he said. "Bring it Friday, to the board."

One of the executives, an older man near the window, cleared his throat.

"Geoffrey, if there's a question about title, we should look at it before Friday."

"There's no question," Geoffrey said.

I crossed the room and put my hand on his keyboard.

"May I?"

He didn't stop me.

I opened the city's property records on his screen and typed in the parcel number.

The page loaded slowly.

Every person at that table leaned in.

The record showed the deed from 1906, with my name on it.

Under it was a new line.

A transfer, filed last month, moving the land from Eleanor Clifford to Willoughby Group Holdings for the sum of one dollar.

The executives read the line, and I watched it reach them one at a time.

Geoffrey read it too.

His face stayed the same, but his hand went flat against the table.

"That's your signature," he said.

"It isn't."

"The transfer was notarized."

"Then the notary was mistaken."

"Camille handled the filing," he said. "She said you'd agreed in principle."

"Did she say it before dinner or after?"

He didn't answer.

I clicked on the scan of the transfer and enlarged the signature.

The loops were right.

Someone had traced my hand from a document I had signed in the nineteen-twenties, and traced it well.

But this copy had a lift of the pen halfway through the M, and I had never written my own name that way.

"I never signed this," I said. "Not last month, and not at any other time."

The older executive had gone pale.

"Geoffrey, that is a serious allegation."

"It's her word," Geoffrey said, "against a notarized page."

"Then let's all look at the page."

I scrolled down to the bottom of the scan.

There were two lines for witnesses.

The first held a name I didn't know, in an office-clerk's neat print.

The second line read: R. Willoughby.

I stopped.

Beside the signature was the date.

It was twenty-two days ago.

Geoffrey saw where I was looking.

"That's my father's signature," he said.

"Your father had a stroke eleven weeks ago. You said so yourself, a minute ago."

Nobody in the room said anything.

"You said he can't sign anything," I said.

Geoffrey looked at the line, and then at the date.

Then he looked at the door.

"Get out," he said quietly.

"Geoffrey."

"All of you. Take your laptops. Out."

The executives went.

Each of them looked at me as they passed, and none of them looked at me as they had at dinner.

When the room was empty, Geoffrey stood and turned his back to me.

"Friday," he said. "Bring everything you have."

"Then you'd better find out who held your father's hand."

I left the door open on my way out.

In the elevator I opened my phone and looked up the name of the care home in Connecticut where Richard Willoughby was living.

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