Chương 7
Trevor pressed his fingers against the glass. Far below, yellow taxis moved along the avenue in ordered lines.
“Delete the thread,” he said.
“I already did.”
“From every device.”
“I know how messages work.”
“No, you know how branding works.”
Sienna laughed once. “There he is.”
He hung up.
For three days, Naomi lived according to her lawyers’ instructions.
She froze her credit. Changed passwords. Opened a new bank account. Created an inventory of marital assets from statements she could lawfully access. She wrote a chronology of the marriage, including dates she had stopped working and the unpaid services she provided ValeRow.
The exercise made her feel both foolish and strangely employed.
At Lenora’s office, a young associate asked Naomi to estimate how many company events she had organized.
“Formal events?”
“All events.”
Naomi began counting. Investor dinners. Holiday parties. Charity tables. Retirement gifts. Hospital visits. Flowers sent after births, funerals and surgeries. Weekends spent correcting seating plans because Trevor refused to sit beside anyone who asked direct questions.
“One hundred and twelve,” she said.
The associate blinked. “You know the exact number?”
“I kept spreadsheets.”
“Do you still have them?”
Naomi did.
Trevor had called her predictable as if predictability left no records.
Ellis hired a forensic accountant, Priya Shah, who wore bright sneakers with gray suits and spoke so softly people leaned toward her.
Priya traced the vendor payments visible in Naomi’s photographs. Harrow Lane had received nearly $1.8 million from ValeRow over eighteen months. Two other vendors received another $3.1 million. Funds moved among them, then into brokerage accounts, real estate deposits and payments to a luxury travel company.
“Can you prove Trevor controlled them?” Naomi asked.
“Not from this alone.”
“Can you prove I didn’t?”
“Not from this alone.”
Priya enlarged the forged resolution. “But whoever prepared this used a scan of your signature from another document. See the compression artifacts?”
Naomi did not, but nodded.
Priya pointed to a small break in the ink line. “This section repeats exactly. Human signatures don’t repeat exactly.”
“Where did they get it?”
“You’ll need to identify the source.”
Naomi searched old files in her cloud storage. The signature matched one she had placed on a home-equity document two years earlier.
The document had been handled by ValeRow’s outside law firm.
Trevor could have obtained it easily.
The discovery produced no dramatic reaction. Naomi closed her laptop, went to the office restroom and washed her hands three times.
That evening, her sister Lena called.
Trevor had contacted her.
“He said you had some kind of breakdown,” Lena said. “He sounded scared.”
“He’s not scared for me.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
Lena sighed. She was four years older and had perfected the sigh during their mother’s illness. It meant Naomi was forcing her to choose between comfort and honesty.
“He said you stole documents.”
“I copied papers with my name on them.”
“Is that legal?”
“My lawyers are dealing with it.”
“Lawyers. Plural.”
“Yes.”
Lena lowered her voice, though she was probably alone. “Did he hit you?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“He’s been having an affair for eight months.”
Lena said nothing.
“He was moving money before filing for divorce,” Naomi continued. “And he used my signature on a company.”
“Oh.”
The smallness of the response irritated Naomi.
“That’s all?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“What part?”
“The part where your husband became a criminal in one phone call.”
Naomi stood beside the borrowed apartment’s narrow kitchen counter. A cabinet door hung slightly crooked above the sink.
“He didn’t become anything in one phone call.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
Lena began crying. That made Naomi angrier.
“Please don’t make me comfort you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“You’re doing it anyway.”
They ended the call badly.
Naomi opened the crooked cabinet and found a screwdriver behind a stack of chipped plates. She tightened the hinge until the door hung straight. The task took six minutes. When she finished, nothing in her life was better except the cabinet.
She made tea and forgot to drink it.
On the fifth day, Sienna emailed Naomi’s old personal address.
We need to talk before Trevor decides what story he’s telling.
Naomi forwarded the email to Ellis and Lenora.
Ellis advised against responding immediately. Lenora asked whether Naomi wanted to meet Sienna.
“No.”
“Good,” Lenora said. “That means we can decide based on usefulness rather than impulse.”
The lawyers arranged a meeting at Ellis’s office with counsel present. Sienna arrived in a cream suit and dark glasses despite the cloudy afternoon. Without the warmth of carefully lit photographs, she looked tired and younger than Naomi expected.
Her attorney, Franklin Moss, was a broad man with a red face who introduced himself too loudly.
Sienna removed her glasses.
A faint bruise darkened the skin beneath her left eye.
Naomi noticed. She did not ask.
Sienna looked at her for a long moment. “I’m sorry.”
Lenora placed a hand flat on the table. “We are not here for personal admissions unrelated to the documents.”
Sienna’s mouth tightened. “Of course.”
She had brought emails showing that Trevor directed marketing contracts to Harrow Lane and two related firms. She claimed she believed the vendors were legitimate entities controlled by silent investors.
“You approved the invoices,” Priya said.
“The work product existed.”
“What work product?”
“Brand studies. Market analysis. Investor decks.”
“Created by whom?”
“My department.”
Priya looked up. “Your employees did the work, and the outside vendors billed for it?”
Sienna rubbed the side of her thumb. “Trevor said the entities were reimbursement channels for strategic partners.”
Darius, seated at the far end of the table, laughed quietly.
Franklin Moss turned toward him. “Is there a problem?”
“Only with the phrase reimbursement channels.”
Sienna glared at Darius. “You signed the original vendor structure.”
“Not this one.”
“You signed enough.”
The room went still.
Naomi watched them.
May you like
“You knew each other before the affair,” she said.
Sienna looked at Trevor’s former partner, then back at Naomi. “I joined ValeRow two months before Darius left.”
