Chương 13
“And you never thought to ask me?”
“I knew what you’d say.”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“That’s why.”
The simplicity of it hurt.
Not confusion.
Not miscommunication.
He had excluded me because my answer would interfere with what he wanted.
“You were willing to use my documents against my wishes.”
“I was trying to avoid using the house.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does from where I was standing.”
“Then explain it.”
He turned toward me.
“Tessa said if Crescent could see the property structure, they might lend against my expected marital interest without actually putting a lien on the house.”
Darcy had returned halfway through that sentence.
She stopped.
“That is nonsense.”
Julian looked at her.
“I know that now.”
“You should have known it then.”
“I was desperate.”
“You keep using that word like it improves your judgment.”
He looked down.
Darcy came back to the island.
“That was Crescent’s counsel.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did they say?”
“They have opened an internal fraud review.”
Julian leaned forward.
“And?”
“They confirmed the alternate email address was used for communications over a period of nine weeks.”
I felt cold again.
“Did they say from where?”
“Not yet.”
Julian asked, “Who communicated through it?”
“Tessa, according to what they can see quickly.”
He closed his eyes.
Darcy continued.
“She appears to have copied you on some messages.”
“I never got them.”
“That may matter.”
“May?”
“We are not doing conclusions today.”
He exhaled.
I looked at Darcy.
“What else?”
She hesitated.
I knew the expression now.
There was always something else.
“They also confirmed Crescent acquired Marcus Hale’s debt through an intermediary company.”
Julian frowned.
“What company?”
“Vale Street Recovery.”
Graham’s last name hung there between us.
Julian’s face changed.
“Vale.”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Graham owned the intermediary?”
“Crescent’s counsel would not confirm ownership.”
“But the name.”
“Is worth examining.”
Julian paced once around the island.
“He stood in our foyer pretending this was news.”
Darcy corrected him.
“He appeared surprised that you did not understand the acquisition.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
I watched her.
“You think Graham is involved.”
“I think Graham knows more than he said.”
She opened her notebook.
“And I think we need to find out what Marcus Hale knew about Tessa.”
Julian stopped pacing.
“Marcus is dead.”
Darcy looked up.
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“Last year.”
“Before or after Crescent bought the debt?”
Julian’s face went blank.
“I don’t know.”
Darcy stared at him.
“You never checked?”
“Why would I?”
“Because a private creditor holding a six-figure obligation died while his debt was being transferred through an intermediary connected by name to the man who just stood in this house.”
Julian lowered himself onto a stool.
“I didn’t know any of that.”
I believed him.
That was becoming its own problem.
Every time I discovered one thing Julian had knowingly done, another thing appeared that he seemed genuinely ignorant of.
His wrongdoing had made him vulnerable.
His vulnerability did not erase his wrongdoing.
Both truths had to sit in the same room.
My phone buzzed.
I flinched.
It was a fraud alert from my bank.
A login attempt had been blocked.
The location showed another state.
Darcy took the phone.
“What time?”
“Just now.”
Julian looked at me.
“What account?”
“My personal savings.”
“Did Tessa know about that?”
“I never told her.”
He went pale.
“Then she got more than the documents I gave her.”
I opened the security details.
The attempted login had used the correct username and an old password I had changed three years earlier.
That password had been one Julian knew.
I looked at him.
He stared at the screen.
“What was the password?”
I told him.
He closed his eyes.
“Tessa knew that one.”
The room went silent.
“How?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I reused it.”
“For what?”
“My streaming account.”
I stared at him.
Darcy closed her notebook.
“Julian.”
“I know.”
“No, I genuinely do not think you do.”
He looked miserable.
“That account had the same password years ago.”
“And you gave Tessa access?”
“She logged into it at her apartment once.”
My stomach twisted.
The detail was stupid.
Almost comically stupid.
That made it believable.
Not some sophisticated hack.
A password shared carelessly during an affair.
A small lazy choice that opened a much larger door.
Darcy pointed at both of us.
“Neither of you uses any password remotely connected to an old one from this moment forward.”
Julian nodded.
I did too.
My bank sent another alert.
This one was not a login attempt.
It was a request to reset security questions.
Darcy’s expression hardened.
“That changes things.”
“What?”
“Someone is actively testing access right now.”
Julian stood.
“Can we trace it?”
“Not ourselves.”
“Then who?”
Darcy picked up her phone.
“I want a formal report.”
“To the police?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Julian stiffened.
The reaction was immediate.
Darcy saw it.
“So did I.”
He looked at me.
“Sloan.”
“What?”
“If police start looking at everything, the Daniel situation could come out.”
I stared at him.
There it was.
The choice beneath all the others.
Safety against concealment.
Truth against the dead man he had spent years trying not to name.
Darcy said nothing.
She did not have to.
Julian looked at the floor.
“I could lose everything.”
I heard my own voice come out strangely calm.
“Daniel already did.”
He looked at me.
The silence that followed was not dramatic.
It was tired.
Final in a way shouting had never been.
I reached for my phone.
Julian’s face changed.
He knew before I said anything.
“I’m making the report.”
He swallowed.
Then he nodded.
Not because he agreed.
Because for the first time since this began, he understood that I was no longer asking permission to protect what was mine.
May you like
Darcy made the call from the dining room while I sat at the kitchen island with my hands wrapped around a coffee mug I had no intention of drinking.
Julian stood by the sink, staring through the window at the backyard as though the fence might open and offer him another life.
