Chương 7
“You don’t have to take everything today.”
“I won’t be allowed back.”
“Then take what matters.”
Elena opened the bedside drawer.
Her passport was gone.
So were her birth certificate and the small velvet box containing her mother’s earrings.
She told the officer. Owen checked the inventory and said Adrian’s counsel would investigate.
On the desk sat a framed photograph from the previous Christmas. Elena and Adrian stood beside Conrad’s fireplace, all three smiling. Elena remembered that Adrian had bruised her wrist that morning during an argument about visiting Nora. She had worn long sleeves in the picture.
She left the photograph facedown.
In the hall closet, behind a stack of shoe boxes, she found an old laptop she had used before the foundation issued her a company device. The battery was dead. She packed it without knowing whether anything useful remained on it.
Owen watched the boxes accumulate.
“This didn’t have to happen,” he said.
Elena turned.
He seemed surprised she heard him.
“What didn’t?”
“All of it.”
Nora stepped out of the bedroom, but Elena raised a hand.
Owen adjusted his tie. “Mr. Vale treated you like a daughter.”
“No. He treated me like an employee he expected to marry his son.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it?”
“He gave you opportunities most people would be grateful for.”
Elena looked around the apartment. “And now he’s taking them back.”
“You took confidential documents.”
“Did he send you to say that?”
“No.”
“Then why are you saying it?”
Owen’s face tightened. He glanced toward the officer.
Elena understood. He had a mortgage too.
She carried the laptop downstairs.
At Nora’s apartment, the old computer took nearly an hour to start. The fan whined, and the screen flickered blue before settling. Elena remembered using it during the first year of her marriage, when she still paid household bills before Adrian told her it was silly for both of them to worry about money.
The desktop held tax returns, photographs, old résumés, and a folder labeled Foundation Drafts.
Inside were meeting notes she had written three years earlier.
One entry concerned a consultant named Claudia Mercer, who had left suddenly after raising questions about executive travel reimbursements. Elena had forgotten the name. At the time, Adrian said Claudia was unstable and had tried to blackmail the family.
The notes included a sentence Elena had typed during a closed meeting:
CS says settlement must be coded outside personnel budget. G.V. asks whether C.M. signed confidentiality terms.
C.S. was Conrad’s former chief counsel. G.V. was Gideon Vale—Conrad’s legal name, which he rarely used outside formal records.
Elena searched the copied vendor invoices.
A company called Mercer Strategic Advisory had received ninety thousand dollars in three payments two years earlier. The mailing address was a post office box in Pennsylvania.
“Claudia Mercer,” Nora said.
“Maybe.”
“Could be another Mercer.”
“It could.”
“Are you going to call her?”
Elena found a public professional profile. Claudia now worked for a healthcare nonprofit in Pittsburgh.
Her hand hovered over the message button.
Marcus had warned her not to investigate recklessly. Rachel had warned her that contacting possible witnesses could be misrepresented. Elena closed the laptop.
“I’m going to ask the lawyer first.”
Nora smiled faintly. “That sounds annoyingly sensible.”
The temporary-order hearing approached.
Adrian hired two attorneys. One filed a written response claiming Elena had become emotionally unstable after discovering unspecified marital problems. He denied striking or kicking her. According to his account, she tried to leave the bridal suite while intoxicated, tripped over the hem of her dress, and struck the vanity.
He attached photographs of three red scratches on his forearm.
Elena remembered making them while pulling at his hand around her wrist.
He also submitted statements from two wedding guests who said Elena had consumed champagne earlier in the evening.
She had drunk half a glass during photographs.
Celia did not provide a statement.
Neither did Conrad.
Rachel read the filing at her desk while Elena sat across from her.
“This is common,” Rachel said.
“That doesn’t make it less effective.”
“No.”
“He has witnesses.”
“They witnessed you holding champagne. They did not witness you fall.”
“They’ll believe him.”
“Some will.”
Elena looked at the peppermints in the bowl. “What if Celia lies?”
“Then she lies.”
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is not simple. It is, however, beyond your control.”
Rachel asked whether there might be hotel video.
Elena pictured the corridor outside the bridal suite. A black half-sphere camera had been mounted near the elevators. It would not show inside the room, but it might show when Adrian entered, when Celia knocked, and how Elena looked when she emerged.
Rachel sent the hotel a preservation request that day.
The hotel’s counsel responded that footage would not be released voluntarily but would be retained pending appropriate legal process.
It was the first useful answer they received from anyone connected to the wedding.
The photographer, Maya Chen, was harder to reach. Her contract belonged to Celia and Daniel, and she would not discuss or release private images without their permission or a court order.
Elena remembered flashes going off after she left the bridal suite. Celia had insisted on completing family photographs before the reception entrance. In those pictures, Elena’s swelling might already be visible.
She had stood beside Adrian while he rested one hand lightly on her waist.
The thought made her nauseated.
Three days before the hearing, Celia came to Nora’s building.
She did not knock. She called from the sidewalk and asked Elena to come outside.
Rachel had advised against private meetings with anyone carrying messages from Adrian. Elena brought Nora and remained in the building vestibule while Celia stood on the other side of the locked glass door.
The bride from the ballroom had disappeared. Celia wore leggings, a camel coat, and no makeup. Her wedding ring seemed too bright against her pale hand.
May you like
“I’m not here for Adrian,” she said through the glass.
Nora said, “Then why are we talking through a locked door?”
