Chapter 15

After Dalton left, Marjorie Beckett, chair of the city's parks oversight board, called Nolan directly to ask whether he intended to attend the meeting deciding Riverside Park's fate. Nolan looked down at the envelope still bearing the city clerk's seal and answered simply that he would be there—not as a man defending himself against accusations, but as something else entirely.That night, Nolan opened an old metal box tucked deep inside his closet and lifted out a yellowed legal document bearing a signature from decades earlier: the founding deed of Riverside Park itself. The paper felt brittle under his fingers, the ink faded to a soft brown, and he read it slowly at the kitchen table long after Mara had gone to sleep, as if hearing it again for the first time.Gideon explained the history behind that document during a quiet conversation the following morning, sharing a story few in town still remembered clearly. Thirty years earlier, the land had belonged to a retired fighter turned philanthropist named Malcolm Hale—Gideon's own father—who had donated it to the city under one binding condition: the park had to remain open to the public forever, especially for those who could never afford access to private fitness clubs or exclusive recreational facilities.Buried within that original deed was a specific clause requiring any commercial project that limited public access to first receive approval from whoever managed the Riverside Legacy Trust. After Malcolm's death, Gideon had taken over that responsibility, but declining health years later had led him to pass the role of successor trustee to the one person he trusted completely with his father's legacy: that person was Nolan Avery.

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