Chương 5
“I have never touched you.”
“That is not the standard.”
He pressed his palm against his forehead.
“I’m not him.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You’re comparing me to him.”
“I’m telling you what I saw.”
He stood and walked toward the window, then stopped because movement made him feel as if he were leaving the conversation.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I’ll do anything.”
“That sounds good because it’s unlimited. I need things that are real.”
He waited.
“I’m staying here for now,” she said. “You don’t come over unless I ask. You don’t talk to Lucas without telling the detective. You don’t decide this is a family matter and try to fix it privately.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
She said nothing.
He closed his eyes.
“I was thinking about it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I know you.”
The words should have felt intimate. They did not.
Claire continued. “And I want you to find someone to help with your anger.”
“I wasn’t angry at you.”
“You were angry in a room with me and our baby. The direction matters less than you think.”
He sat again.
“All right.”
“Don’t say it unless you mean it.”
“I mean it.”
Noah began crying. Claire shifted the phone, and for a few seconds Ethan heard fabric moving, the small wet hiccup of his son’s breath, and Margaret in the background asking whether the bottle was warm enough.
Claire said, “I have to go.”
“Can I hear him for a second?”
“You already can.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
She held the phone closer to Noah. His cry filled Ethan’s ear.
Then the call ended.
The next morning, Ethan met with a commercial attorney, an accountant, the bank’s fraud investigator, and Detective Ortiz. Each asked for records the others also wanted. Each warned him not to assume stolen funds would be recovered. The bank had stopped forty-eight thousand dollars. Another thirty-two thousand had been traced to an account that was now frozen. The rest had moved through payment services, cash withdrawals, and an online brokerage account.
The loan documents on the kitchen island were worse.
Lucas had obtained a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar line of credit using Cole Restoration’s assets and Ethan’s personal guarantee. Most of the signatures were electronic. Authentication records showed approval codes sent to Ethan’s phone.
“Where were you on these dates?” the attorney asked.
Ethan looked at the list.
Job sites. A hospital visit when Noah had a fever. Dinner at Margaret’s house before they stopped speaking. Asleep beside Claire.
Lucas had not needed to forge every movement. He had simply lived near Ethan long enough to borrow them.
The limited power of attorney would have allowed Northline to negotiate certain debts on Cole Restoration’s behalf. It had not yet been filed. Claire found it beneath the other papers before Lucas could persuade or force anyone to sign it.
“Why leave documents at your house?” Ortiz asked.
“He kept some business files in the guest room.”
“Why?”
“He said he worked late.”
“Did that seem normal?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s my brother.”
Ortiz stopped writing.
“That’s not an operational reason.”
Ethan looked through the conference-room window at the warehouse floor. One of the crews was loading cabinets into a box truck. Someone had left a radio playing near the tool cage, too low for him to make out the song.
“He moved in three months ago,” Ethan said. “His apartment building had a fire.”
“Was there a fire?”
“I saw pictures.”
“Did you verify the address?”
“No.”
The detective’s pen moved again.
Lucas contacted him that afternoon.
The message came from an unfamiliar email address and contained no greeting.
Tell Mom to withdraw her statement. Tell Claire she fell. I return what’s left.
A second message arrived before Ethan finished reading.
If I go down, the company goes with me.
Ethan forwarded both to Ortiz.
Then he opened a reply window.
His fingers rested above the keyboard.
He could ask where Lucas was. He could promise anything long enough to bring him home. He could appeal to childhood, to Noah, to the nights they had slept in the same room while their father shouted downstairs. Lucas had always answered Ethan when everyone else failed.
Ortiz called before he typed.
“Do not respond yet.”
“He says he’ll return the money.”
“He says many things.”
“I can get him to meet.”
“Maybe. Or he gets you alone.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me.”
The silence on the line made the sentence collapse under its own weight.
Ortiz said, “Your wife probably believed the same thing yesterday.”
Ethan closed the reply window.
Payroll required one hundred twelve thousand dollars.
He covered part of it by emptying the company’s emergency reserve and part by borrowing against two paid-off vehicles. He put forty thousand on a personal credit line with an interest rate that made the accountant stop speaking for several seconds.
The checks cleared Friday.
On Monday, three employees resigned.
One had worked for the company since Ethan’s father ran it. He shook Ethan’s hand and said he could not risk missing a future paycheck. Another simply left his keys on the reception desk. The third cried while explaining that her husband had been laid off and she needed certainty.
Ethan did not ask any of them to stay.
By the end of the week, two clients had delayed projects after rumors spread that Cole Restoration was under investigation. A local supplier reduced the company’s credit limit. Someone posted online that Ethan had used a fake vendor to steal from customers.
The post named Lucas nowhere.
Public shame did not care which brother signed what.
Claire returned to the house once, accompanied by Margaret, to collect more clothes.
Ethan remained in the backyard until she called him inside.
May you like
She stood in the bedroom folding shirts into a suitcase. The bruise on her cheek had faded from red to yellow. The change made it look older, not smaller.
Noah slept in a portable carrier beside the bed. Margaret waited in the hallway, close enough to hear but far enough to pretend she was not listening.
