He looks me straight in the eyes, brows furrowed, as if he knows the answer but wants to prepare me to hear it. “Dad doesn’t believe Grandpa died of a heart attack.”
I’m trying to make sense of what Max just revealed. “Do you think someone murdered Grandfather?”
“There’s no proof of it, and I’ve been looking.”
I study Max. I know him probably better than he knows himself. “Your answer concerns me.”
“How so?”
“‘There’s no proof’ is not a hard no, which means you’re not certain.”
Max nods thoughtfully. “I bet you didn't know that Grandpa had a phobia—a paranoia.”
“Okay…” I say cautiously. His statement seemed to come out of the blue.
“He feared that oppositional forces were always lurking, watching, waiting to steal something from him.”
I cross my arms. “‘Something’?”
Max walks to the stacks and runs his hand across a row of books. “He set out to be a pioneer of new technology. His ideas were lofty, rooted in imagination and possibility.” He stops at a particular book.
“Yes, he was an idealist,” I say, frowning while reading the title,The Count of Monte Cristo.
“Just because it hasn’t been discovered doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Max says.
I grin nostalgically. “Grandpa used to say that a lot.”
Max slides the book off the shelf. “That was his theory about light.”
“Which was how I was able to create TRANSPORT.”
“Yes,” he says, shuffling through the pages of the classic novel. “Did you know that a week before Grandfather died, this house was ransacked?”
I snort facetiously. “No, I didn’t. But I’m not surprised. No one tells me anything.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Yeah, but it happened ten years ago.”
“I understand your frustration, Pais. I won’t be hiding anything from you from this point forward, starting with this.” He holds up the book.
“The Count of Monte Cristo?”
“When the house was ransacked, someone was searching for something.”
“Did they find what they were looking for?”
Max nods toward the two red leather chairs. “Let’s sit.”
It feels as if a big rock is sitting on top of my head and in my chest when we walk over and take our seats. Max starts with Grandpa’s early relationship with Hugo Valentine, Hercules’s grandfather. The Valentines made their wealth during the Gilded Age, a term coined in 1873 by the writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley to mean glittering on the outside but corrupt beneath the surface. Max says that’s the best way to describe the dynasty of the Valentines, who had squandered the bulk of their wealth by the early 1990s. Only three factions of the family were able to keep their heads above water by the year 2000. The patriarch of the Valentine fortune left hundreds of controlling clauses and rules when it came to dispersion of the trust, along with morality clauses and advantages for marrying to keep the wealth in the family.
Max pauses to study my face. It’s as if he’s sending me an unspoken message. I keep my face neutral. I’ve heard about the Hercules Valentine and Contessa V. Briar wedding. Eden was the one who brought their nuptials to my attention. Even though she broke all ties with Nero, she used to keep up with news about him and his family. Just as I learned about Hercules and Contessa’s planned wedding on top of the Empire State Building, I also heard about the couple’s breakup. It was said that she broke up with him because he couldn’t stop cheating. However, other sources say that he broke it off without explanation. The rumor is Marigold Valentine, his mother, isn’t happy about the break and is estranged from all three of her sons because of it.
The more Max talks about the Valentines, the more I’m squirming in my seat, turning more impatient. It’s taken a long time to forget my sexual encounter with Hercules. I really don’t need Max stoking an old flame, which is threatening to start a fire in my heart and lady parts.
I sigh forcefully. “Okay, so why all the talk about the Valentines?”
“Because Hugo funded the early versions of TRANSPORT back when the software was just an inspiration. When Grandpa asked for time to finish the development, Hugo wouldn’t allow it.” Max smirks. “He wasn’t a believer.”
