Chapter 4: Everything He Planned to Take
Rebecca's lawyer worked out of a narrow brownstone office twenty minutes from Derek's family estate.
The lights were on when we arrived.
A woman in her fifties opened the door before we knocked — silver hair pulled back, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, a yellow legal pad already in her hand.
"You must be Chloe," she said.
"I'm Grace Ellison.
Come in."
The front room had been cleared of its usual furniture.
A folding table held a laptop, a scanner, and three neat stacks of documents.
A second woman sat in the corner — mid-forties, quiet, with the careful stillness of someone who had learned to take up as little space as possible.
"This is Diane," Grace said.
"She was before Rebecca."
Diane looked up.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
I set my backpack on the table.
"I have the marriage certificate and the prenup.
I photographed everything upstairs."
Grace nodded.
"Good.
Send those photos to this address right now, before anything else." She slid a card across the table.
"The moment they're in my server, they're protected."
I sent the files.
Grace's laptop pinged.
"Now," she said, sitting down and opening the manila envelope I had brought from the car, "let me show you what Derek has been doing for the past eleven years."
She laid out the documents in a row.
Property transfer agreements.
Three of them, each signed by a different woman, each transferring partial ownership of assets — a car, a savings account, a small investment portfolio — to Derek within the first year of a serious relationship.
Each transfer had been witnessed by Martin Greer, Esq.
Each woman had used a lawyer recommended by Derek.
"He targets women with independent assets," Grace said.
"Not wealthy women — that would attract too much scrutiny.
Women with modest savings.
A safety net.
Something real but not large enough to fight over in court."
"Forty-five thousand dollars," I said.
"Exactly the kind of amount a woman saves over a decade of careful work.
Enough to matter.
Not enough to hire a forensic accountant." Grace tapped the prenup.
"Clause 14(b) is the mechanism.
The recommended lawyer is the delivery system.
Martin Greer witnesses everything so there's a paper trail that looks legitimate."
"How long before he would have moved the money?"
"Based on the pattern — ninety days.
He waits until the woman feels settled.
Then there's a household expense.
A joint account that just makes things easier.
A small deposit that seems harmless." Grace looked at me steadily.
"Within ninety days, your $45,000 would have been legally his."
My phone buzzed on the table.
Derek again.
Then a text.
*Chloe.
This is not funny.
Open the door.*
Then, thirty seconds later: *Where are you.*
I turned the phone over.
"He doesn't know I'm gone yet."
"Good," Grace said.
"We have a window.
I need you to tell me everything you remember about the four months before the wedding.
Every document you signed.
Every account you opened.
Every financial conversation."
I started talking.
Rebecca sat beside me and filled in the gaps — the same conversations Derek had used on her, nearly word for word.
The same urgency about combining finances before the wedding.
The same casual mention of Martin Greer's name as someone who "just handles the paperwork."
Diane spoke once, quietly, from the corner.
"He told me the joint account was for tax purposes," she said.
"I believed him for eight months."
The room went still.
Grace wrote something on her legal pad.
"Diane, I'm going to need you to sign an affidavit tonight if you're willing."
Diane nodded without hesitation.
My phone lit up again.
This time it wasn't Derek.
It was Brenda.
I stared at the name on the screen.
Grace watched me.
"She knows," I said.
"She's always known," Rebecca said.
"She helps him find them."
I set the phone face-down again.
But not before I pressed the small red button at the bottom of the screen — the one that started the recording app I had installed four months ago, the night I first began to suspect that something about Derek's financial questions wasn't right.
"Grace," I said.
"If she leaves a voicemail, can we use it?"
Grace looked at me over her reading glasses.
"Depending on what she says," she said carefully, "yes."
Thirty seconds later, Brenda's voicemail notification appeared.
I pressed play and set the phone on the table between us.
May you like
Brenda's voice filled the quiet room — warm, almost amused, completely certain that she was speaking to no one who could hurt her.
What she said in the next forty seconds made Grace put down her pen and reach for her phone.
