Chapter 5 - The Price of Staying Quiet

For two days, I had two separate questions that refused to leave me alone.

Why had Adrian spent six months with Sofia while telling me that I was the woman he loved? And why had somebody used my name to authorize a financial transaction I knew nothing about?

The first question belonged to my marriage. The second had a date, a company account, and a signature. Robin told me the second might be easier to investigate.

She arranged a meeting with an independent document examiner and obtained a clearer copy from the lender. I supplied examples of my signature from bank forms, contracts, and correspondence signed over the previous several years. The examiner didn't promise an instant answer. He said the different joins and spacing required proper comparison against an original, and that a digital image alone had limitations.

I appreciated his caution. Too many people were eager to give me certainty before they had earned it.

Meanwhile, Adrian's counsel supplied a letter saying Moretti Holdings was conducting an internal review. The company would cooperate with requests concerning the disputed authorization. Robin read the letter, then pointed out that a company investigating its own officers wasn't a substitute for independent verification.

“Do you think Adrian knew?” I asked.

“I don't know. That's not an answer we'll manufacture.”

The following morning, I met Adrian at Robin's office. It was the first time I'd agreed to sit in the same room with him since our anniversary.

He arrived without security visible in the hallway. His suit was immaculate, his eyes tired. I knew every familiar line of his face, which made looking at him almost physically painful.

He stopped when he saw me.

“Claire.”

“Sit down, Adrian.”

Something crossed his expression. Perhaps surprise at hearing his own commanding tone returned to him. He took the chair opposite me.

Robin explained that we would discuss property records only. Adrian agreed. Then I asked him a question that had nothing to do with the documents.

“When did you first decide that lying to me was easier than telling me the truth?”

He looked at Robin, who remained silent.

“I didn't decide it all at once,” he said. “I told myself it would stop.”

“Six months?”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you have a chance to stop?”

He said nothing.

I hadn't expected a useful answer. I wanted him to hear how ridiculous his original word mistake had sounded. A broken dish was a mistake. Missing an appointment was a mistake. Six months required decisions made over and over again.

Adrian acknowledged paying for some of Sofia's travel and hotel expenses. He said he'd approved reimbursements through Marco, incorrectly allowing private spending to be mixed with business accounts.

“You knew it was improper?” Robin asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you authorize Claire's signature?”

“No.”

“Did you ask anyone to obtain her consent?”

“Marco said we might need a routine renewal. I told him to prepare the papers. I did not tell him to sign for her.”

I watched Adrian's hands. They lay flat against the conference table, steady except for his left thumb moving against his wedding ring.

“Would you have told me about Sofia if she hadn't called?” I asked.

He looked directly at me.

“I was going to.”

“When?”

He didn't answer quickly enough.

“That's what I thought.”

Robin returned to the financing records. According to the copy we had, the disputed document involved a credit facility tied to development contracts. West Pier had received money against projected revenue. One of the assets listed as additional support was our rental-property investment. The agreement would not necessarily have made me personally liable for every company debt, Robin explained, but it could have exposed an interest I owned to consequences I hadn't agreed to accept.

“Why was that asset needed?” she asked Adrian.

“Marco said a lender wanted more security because construction had been delayed.”

“Was construction delayed?”

“Yes.”

“By how much?”

Adrian hesitated. He knew the project's total value but admitted he hadn't examined the most recent schedule.

I almost laughed. He could remember precisely what I liked in my coffee. He knew which flowers made me sneeze. He had noticed when I changed shampoo. Yet he'd left an agreement involving my financial interest to someone who apparently believed my signature was optional.

At the end of the meeting, Adrian requested a few minutes alone with me. Robin asked whether I wanted that. I did, but only with the conference-room door open.

“I don't know how to make this right,” he said.

“Then stop making promises you can't keep.”

“I've told Marco to step away from anything involving your property.”

“You should have done that before he touched it.”

He looked down.

“Claire, I meant what I said about loving you.”

“Then you need to learn that love isn't measured by what you meant. It's measured by what you did.”

His face tightened, but he didn't argue.

After he left, Robin received a second packet of company records. The reimbursement pages confirmed that several of Sofia's hotel stays had been charged to development-related expense categories. They also showed a series of much larger payments to an outside consulting vendor called Northlake Strategies.

At first, I assumed the entries belonged to the normal business that I didn't understand. Robin circled the dates. Several payments had been authorized in the same weeks as Sofia's travel. All had passed through Marco's department. The amounts were far beyond the cost of hotel rooms.

“Does Sofia work for this vendor?” I asked.

“Not according to the personnel information we've received.”

“Then what is it?”

“We need to find out.”

That evening, Sofia called. I let the phone ring once, then answered.

“Marco suspended my access to the project system,” she said. “Human resources told me I'm on administrative leave.”

“Talk to a lawyer.”

“I have. I just wanted you to know he also asked for my personal phone.”

“Why?”

“He said company conversations might be relevant to a compliance review.”

“Don't hand over personal things without advice.”

“I won't.”

Her voice trembled. I thought of how she'd sounded when she announced her pregnancy, certain enough to speak and frightened enough to deny doing it moments later.

“This doesn't make us friends,” I said.

“I know.”

We ended the call without saying goodbye.

The next afternoon, Robin showed me a preliminary analysis. Northlake Strategies appeared to have submitted invoices for services that didn't match the project descriptions in the documents available. A larger review was necessary, but the first comparison raised questions unrelated to Sofia's affair.

There was also an email from Marco to a lender administrator. It referred to my authorization as received and complete, although the electronic submission record showed the attachment had not yet been uploaded.

The timestamp was four hours before someone submitted the form bearing my disputed signature.

Robin leaned back in her chair.

“Whatever else is true,” she said, “this wasn't a paper that simply wandered into the wrong folder.”

May you like

[COMPLETED] “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DRESS! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OLD SEAM...

[COMPLETED] At the Mafia Boss's Engagement Party, I Served His Hungry So...

[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Tried to Dismiss His Father’s Loyal...

I looked at the screen. For a week I'd been trying to understand how my husband could conceal another woman. Now I faced something colder: somebody had expected my name to be useful without my knowledge.

And somebody had counted on my marriage keeping me quiet.