“But my mother did.”
Every sound around me faded.
“What?”
“When I was little, she had an accountant named Martin.”
My father.
I closed my eyes.
“What kind of work did your mother do?”
“She owned a small antiques business.”
“Did she work with developers?”
“All the time.”
My skin went cold.
“Marissa, listen carefully.
Did your mother ever mention something called the Vale Consortium?”
Silence.
Then she whispered:
“That was my grandfather’s company.”
The twist was not that Marissa’s family had been connected to my father’s investigation.
The twist was that her grandfather had been at the center of it.
Arthur Vale.
Real-estate developer.
Philanthropist.
Donor.
Dead for sixteen years.
According to Rebecca’s father’s notes, he had created the original network my father was investigating.
Shell companies.
Inflated design contracts.
False procurement invoices.
Hidden equity transfers.
And one company that appeared repeatedly.
Brooks Properties.
Eric’s father’s company.
I sat in my attorney’s office at two in the morning with Price, Rebecca’s statement, my father’s recovered ledger, and Marissa across from me.
She looked destroyed.
“My grandfather?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head.
“He built schools.”
“He also built shell companies.”
“No.”
I almost felt sorry for her.
Then I remembered her on my sofa.
“This is bigger than either of us.”
She looked at me.
“Where is Eric?”
Price answered.
“We found his car at the airport.”
“Did he leave?”
“No.”
My attorney looked up.
“Then where is he?”
Price placed a photograph on the table.
Security footage.
Eric entering a private records facility forty minutes before the fire.
He was carrying a key.
My storage-unit key.
And my father’s ledger had been with Rebecca.
Which meant he was looking for something else.
I stared at the image.
Then I understood.
“The house.”
Everyone looked at me.
I said it again.
“The house.”
My attorney frowned.
“What about it?”
Eric’s father left it to him.
Inherited property.
Protected by the prenup.
The one asset Eric never worried about losing.
The one place my father had visited frequently during the first year of our marriage because he liked helping me renovate it.
Except my father had died before that.
I froze.
No.
That timeline was wrong.
My father died seven years ago.
Eric and I had been married nine.
For two years, my father had known that house.
He had helped me inspect it before we renovated.
He had spent hours in Eric’s father’s old study.
Once, he joked:
Old houses keep better records than people do.
I stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
“The deed.”
My attorney looked confused.
“What?”
“Eric kept saying the deed described the walls.”
Marissa stared.
I whispered, “My father said old houses keep records.”
Price was already standing.
“What are you thinking?”
“The study.”
“The study is gone.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“The furniture is gone.”
My furniture.
The movers had taken the walnut shelves from the study because Brooks Design Studio owned them.
And behind those shelves—
Luis had found the drive behind the media cabinet.
What else had been hidden behind furniture?
