Chapter 7 - What Laya Expected to Inherit

Naomi gave her formal statement on a Thursday morning. Rachel did not ask me to sit through it. Instead she called afterward and told me the parts that mattered to the upcoming hearing, making clear where Naomi had direct knowledge and where she was describing things Laya had told her.

For months, Laya had spoken as if I were temporary.

At first Naomi assumed it was jealousy. Laya complained that Roman had married the wrong woman, that I had no taste for his social world, and that I would never know how to stand beside him at public events. Naomi had heard women say cruel things about other women before. She hadn't considered them a plan.

Then Sophie was born.

Laya began asking for copies of household schedules. Vincent supplied staff rosters, invoices, and the names of vendors who serviced the cameras. Laya told Naomi that a newborn changed everything: if she could become indispensable in the nursery, she would become indispensable to Roman.

"He trusts people who solve problems," she had said.

The problem Laya wanted to solve was me.

Naomi described a meeting at a hotel conference room two weeks before the birthday party. Laya and Vincent reviewed a draft document suggesting that I should rest outside the family home while an appointed director oversaw the baby's care. Naomi had seen the words "maternal wellness" and "temporary supervision." She hadn't seen my signature that day.

At the birthday dinner she saw the finished version, and she heard Laya say that any objection from me would prove I was difficult to manage.

Naomi had spent years assisting powerful people. She knew a threat when she heard one.

She also knew something the rest of us did not yet understand. Crane Advisory was not an ordinary company earning fees for genuine work. Its invoices were being approved by Vincent, who received a percentage of the payments through a separate consulting arrangement disclosed in the financial records. The outside reviewer traced the payments and provided the auditors with the underlying banking documentation. Rachel told me prosecutors would have to decide whether crimes had been committed; a financial pattern alone was not a conviction.

The motive was clear enough without a courtroom verdict.

Laya wanted a role that gave her access to Roman's household, his public life, and the money administered for family services. She believed that forcing me out of daily decisions about Sophie would bring her closer to becoming the woman at the center of his life.

There was a cruelty in the plan that I had not expected. Laya had treated my daughter as a key that could open a door.

When Rachel told me, I did not feel triumph. I felt sick.

I asked the question I had avoided for days.

"Did Roman know she wanted my place?"

"He admits he knew she wanted a relationship with him," Rachel said. "He denies knowing about the forms and the financial arrangement. The documents we've seen support that distinction, though his lawyers are still gathering evidence."

It was not the same as innocence.

That evening Roman requested another conversation, and I agreed to speak for ten minutes with Rachel present. He began without demanding that I come home.

"Laya and I were involved," he said.

I looked at the wall. I had known. The photographs, the late calls, the nights away. I had known, and still hearing him say it made the air leave my chest.

"For how long?"

"Since before you gave birth. It was wrong."

"And you went to her birthday when Sophie was six days old."

"Yes."

He did not tell me it meant nothing. He did not call Laya a family friend. For once he used words that fit what had happened.

"I ended it," he continued. "I removed her from every position connected to the family office. I didn't know about the nursery papers. I should have looked at what people were doing in my name."

"You should have listened to your wife," I said.

He was silent.

"Did you think I would stay no matter what?"

"I thought I could make everything up to you later."

"With what? Money? Another nursery? Another promise?"

He breathed out slowly. "I don't know."

It was the first answer that sounded honest.

Roman agreed to provide his full communications with Vincent and Laya to the independent reviewers through proper legal channels. He also acknowledged, in a signed statement, that I had never asked for the wellness assessment. It was an important admission because it removed the suggestion that I had somehow invited the interference.

But our conversation did not change where I lived. It did not repair the memories of the hospital or the birthday dinner. It certainly did not make me feel ready to hand over control of Sophie's routines.

Over the weekend, Julia helped me rearrange the small room we used for sleeping. Sophie now woke every few hours, and I had become skilled at moving through the dark without bumping furniture. On the windowsill stood the little hand-knitted hat my cousin had sent us. I remembered seeing it in our mansion's changing-table drawer when I packed.

I had taken it with me.

The room held almost nothing expensive. But its door stayed closed unless I opened it. That was a luxury I was only beginning to understand.

On Monday, Rachel received the forensic comparison of my signature. The examiner's formal report concluded that the disputed signature showed substantial indications of simulation rather than natural writing. The evidence would still be tested through the legal process, but it gave weight to my denial.

There was also an unexpected discovery in the electronic file history. The signature image had been copied from a maternity-related document I had signed at the hospital weeks earlier. Access records showed that a Moretti household administrator obtained that document through a file-sharing folder maintained for medical reimbursements.

The administrator's credentials belonged to Vincent's office.

Rachel read the audit entries aloud. For a moment I heard nothing except the refrigerator humming in Julia's kitchen.

The person who copied my signature had not needed to imitate my handwriting by hand. They had already possessed it.

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I looked at Sophie's sleeping face and realized what would have happened if Naomi had kept quiet. The form might have been accepted as mine long enough to make my refusal look like the first sign of a problem.

By the time I asked anyone to listen, someone else would have been speaking for me.