Chương 8
Lydia closed her eyes.
“No.”
I felt anger rise and forced it back down.
Dana continued.
“Do you still have the email?”
“Probably.”
“Do not forward it to anyone except me for now.”
“What if Marcus has access to my email?”
That question changed the room.
Dana answered first.
“Does he know your password?”
“He might.”
“Might?”
“We share some passwords.”
Raymond muttered something under his breath.
Lydia heard him.
“I know.”
Dana said, “Change the password from a device he has never used, then enable two-factor authentication using a number or authenticator he cannot access.”
Tessa looked at Raymond.
“Can she use one of your devices?”
“I can get a clean laptop.”
“Do it.”
He left.
Lydia sat down again.
“I feel stupid.”
Dana said, “Feeling stupid is not useful right now.”
Lydia gave a humorless laugh.
“You sound like my mother.”
“I’ll bill you less.”
That actually made Lydia smile.
I did too.
For three seconds, the room was almost normal.
Then the unknown number texted again.
You have ten minutes.
Lydia stared at the message.
A second appeared.
Tell Eleanor to withdraw the complaint.
I took the phone.
There was still no explicit statement of what would happen if we refused.
That restraint bothered me.
Marcus was angry, but whoever sent these messages was careful.
“What complaint?” Lydia asked.
“The forgery report.”
“You already filed it?”
“I started the process.”
She stood again.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“What if this makes everything worse?”
“For whom?”
“For everyone.”
“That is too broad to answer.”
“Marcus.”
I looked at her.
She looked ashamed of saying his name.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You think I’m still protecting him.”
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
There it was again.
This time the words sounded exhausted instead of evasive.
I sat across from her.
“If he walks through that door right now and tells you there is an explanation, what happens?”
She stared at the table.
“I want to say I wouldn’t believe him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her eyes filled.
“I don’t know.”
Dana spoke quietly through the phone.
“That’s enough for today.”
Lydia wiped her face.
“What?”
“You don’t need to decide whether you love him today.”
“I married him today.”
“Yes.”
“You’re saying that like it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters legally.”
Dana paused.
“It does not require you to decide the rest of your life before dinner.”
Lydia leaned back.
I looked toward the reception lawn.
People were eating.
The band had started something louder.
Life had the indecency to continue.
Raymond returned with a laptop.
He placed it in front of Lydia.
She changed her email password, then her cloud account, then her banking login.
Halfway through, she stopped.
“Marcus knows the PIN to my phone.”
“Change it,” Dana said.
She did.
Then she opened the DocuSign email.
Tessa moved closer but did not touch the keyboard.
“Open the audit history.”
Lydia clicked.
A list of timestamps appeared.
Dana asked her to read them aloud.
“Sent Tuesday at ten fourteen in the morning.”
“Opened?”
“Ten eighteen.”
“Signed?”
“Ten nineteen.”
I looked at her.
“One minute?”
“I was in a car.”
“Whose car?”
“Mine.”
“Marcus with you?”
“Yes.”
Lydia’s face shifted.
“He handed me my phone.”
No one spoke.
“He said the email had just come through.”
Her breathing shortened.
“He told me where to click.”
Dana said, “Keep reading.”
Lydia scrolled.
“IP address listed.”
Tessa wrote it down.
“Anything else?”
“There’s a second authentication event.”
“When?”
“Ten twenty.”
“From where?”
“Different IP.”
Tessa frowned.
“Can you identify the location?”
“No.”
Dana said, “Don’t guess.”
Lydia scrolled further.
“There’s a document completion certificate.”
“Open it.”
She did.
Her face drained.
“What?”
I moved around the table.
On the screen was a completed signature page.
Lydia’s digital signature appeared twice.
Once where she remembered signing.
Once on a separate acknowledgment she had never mentioned.
Dana asked, “Did you knowingly sign both fields?”
“No.”
“Did you see both fields?”
“No.”
Tessa said, “The platform can pre-tag multiple signatures.”
Dana answered, “Correct, but that does not resolve consent.”
Lydia enlarged the page.
Beneath the second signature was language authorizing Marcus Thorne to act as her designated representative for the real estate acquisition.
She whispered, “He buried it.”
Dana said, “Possibly.”
“He buried it.”
“We will establish what happened from the records.”
Lydia slammed the laptop shut.
“I don’t need records to know what he did.”
I reached for the computer before she could shove it off the table.
“You do if you want anyone else to know.”
She looked at me.
I said, “Anger is not evidence.”
Her mouth twisted.
“That also sounds like you.”
“It should.”
The unknown number called.
Not texted.
Called.
Every person in the room stared at Lydia’s phone.
Dana said, “Do not answer.”
Lydia reached for it anyway.
I caught her wrist.
She pulled away.
“I need to hear his voice.”
“You don’t know it’s him.”
“That’s why I’m answering.”
Dana said, “Lydia.”
She ignored her and accepted the call.
“Hello?”
No one spoke on the other end.
Then came a man’s voice.
Not Marcus.
“Put Eleanor on.”
Lydia’s eyes lifted to mine.
“Who is this?”
“You know what needs to happen.”
The voice was distorted slightly, not electronically, but by road noise.
A vehicle in motion.
I held out my hand.
Lydia gave me the phone.
“This is Eleanor Vale.”
The man laughed softly.
“You sound calmer than Marcus said.”
“Marcus says many things.”
“You filed a fraud complaint.”
“Yes.”
“Withdraw it.”
“No.”
A pause.
Not surprised.
Assessing.
“You should think about your daughter.”
“I am.”
“She signed things.”
“I’m aware.”
“Things that could embarrass her.”
“Embarrassment is survivable.”
The man was silent.
I could hear tires crossing rough pavement.
Then a turn signal clicking.
“You’re making this difficult.”
“So are you.”
“Do you know how many people invested because she introduced them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what they’ll say when they learn she had side agreements?”
May you like
Lydia went still.
I said, “What side agreements?”
