She looked exhausted.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I said, “How long?”
Her face crumpled.
“Evelyn—”
“How long have you been sleeping with my fiancé?”
She started crying.
I felt nothing.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-two months.”
The precision was grotesque.
I nodded.
“Did you help him forge my signature?”
“No.”
“Did you know about the companies?”
“Yes.”
“The trust?”
“Eventually.”
“And the competency petition?”
Her eyes lowered.
“Yes.”
I turned away.
There are betrayals so large anger cannot contain them.
You become cold instead.
“What do you want?”
“To help you.”
I laughed.
“Interesting timing.”
“I know.”
“You helped a man sleep with my sister, steal her assets and legally declare her incompetent, but forty-eight hours before my wedding you discovered morality?”
Her face twisted.
“I deserve that.”
“You deserve worse.”
“Yes.”
That stopped me.
Chloe wiped her cheeks.
“I thought he loved me.”
Of course.
The oldest sentence in history.
“He said he was trapped with you because of the trust.
He said he’d tried leaving but your father had tied the company financing to your relationship.”
“My father died six years ago.”
“I know.”
“No, Chloe.
You clearly don’t.”
She looked at me.
“Carter told me Westbridge existed because your father invested in him.”
“That’s not true.”
Her face changed.
“What?”
“My father refused to invest in Westbridge.”
Silence.
Chloe slowly reached into her handbag.
“There’s something you need to hear.”
She handed me a recorder.
I didn’t touch it.
“What is that?”
“I started recording Carter six months ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I realized he was lying to me too.”
That almost made me smile.
“Congratulations.”
She flinched.
“He talks in his sleep sometimes.”
I stared.
“One night he said your father’s name.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“What did he say?”
Chloe looked terrified.
“He said, ‘Arthur should have signed when he had the chance.’”
My father’s name was Arthur.
She continued.
“I started digging.
Carter got furious when he found me in his office.
That’s when I realized this was bigger.”
“Play it.”
She did.
Carter’s voice filled the empty church.
Calm.
Amused.
Drunk.
Arthur Hart was too righteous for his own good. If he’d backed Westbridge, none of this would’ve been necessary.
Another man’s voice responded.
I recognized it immediately.
Martin Vale.
Carter’s father.
Arthur knew the numbers were false.
Carter laughed.
And look where honesty got him.
My breath stopped.
The recording continued.
Once I control Evelyn’s trust, we can bury the old audit permanently.
Old audit.
I looked at Chloe.
“What audit?”
“I don’t know.”
I called Miriam from the church.
“Find every file connected to my father and Westbridge.
Everything.”
That evening, Miriam called me back.
Her voice was unlike anything I had ever heard.
“We found something.”
“What?”
“Your father investigated Westbridge eight years ago.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“He found accounting fraud.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“Because he never filed the report.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
My father died six years earlier in what police ruled a single-car accident.
Rain.
A mountain road.
No witnesses.
I closed my eyes.
“Miriam.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.
And right now we have no evidence connecting Carter to your father’s death.”
