Chapter 4: What Jessi Found
I was back in the Range Rover with the envelope on the passenger seat before Wendy finished the call.
She tried to follow me out.
"You can't just go in there without a plan—"
"I'll call you."
"You don't understand what state she's in—"
"Wendy." I stopped with my hand on the car door.
"You have spent eight years managing this.
You managed Daniel.
You managed Fiona.
You managed what Jessi believed about me.
You are not going to manage what happens next."
I left her standing in the lot.
The drive back to Greenwich took twenty-two minutes.
I spent most of it with one hand on the wheel and the envelope on the seat beside me, not opening it.
Whatever was inside had already destroyed one life.
I wanted to be home before it had the chance to destroy another.
Jessi's car was in the driveway at an angle, the way she parked when she was upset — not careless, just not careful.
I'd known that about her for eleven years.
The front door was unlocked.
She was in my study.
Standing behind my desk with a stack of folders in her hands, her face pale and her eyes red.
She'd been crying before I arrived.
She wasn't crying now.
"You cancelled the flight," she said.
"I did."
"Why?"
"Fiona asked me not to go."
Something moved across her face.
She set the folders down slowly.
"What did she tell you?"
"Enough." I stepped into the room.
"I saw Daniel, Jessi."
Her hands went flat on the desk.
"I followed Wendy.
I saw him.
I went inside.
I talked to him." I kept my voice level.
"He showed me the building.
He told me about Reeves.
He told me about the accounts." I paused.
"He told me what you thought about me."
She didn't deny it.
"I didn't know what to think."
"For eight years."
"For eight years," she said.
"Yes."
"You could have asked me."
"Could I?" Her voice cracked slightly.
"Daniel called me the night before he disappeared.
He told me what he'd found.
He told me whose company it was traced back to.
He told me what Reeves had said to him." She looked at me directly.
"What was I supposed to do with that?
Ask my husband over dinner whether he'd arranged to have my brother framed?"
"Yes.
That is exactly what you should have done."
"And if you'd said no?
What would that have proved?"
"It would have proved that you trusted me."
The words landed harder than I intended.
She looked away.
I crossed the room and sat in the chair across from the desk — not behind it, not beside her.
Across.
"I am not angry that you were afraid," I said.
"I am telling you that eight years of silence didn't protect anyone.
It protected Reeves."
She sat down slowly.
"I know that now."
"When did you know it?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"About two years ago.
Daniel started looking again, more carefully.
He found things that didn't point to you.
Structures that were built before you took over the holding group.
Accounts that had been active for years before you had access to them." She folded her hands on the desk.
"But by then we'd already built the whole system to keep him hidden.
Wendy, the building, the visits with Fiona.
It had become its own thing."
"So you kept going."
"We didn't know how to stop without telling you everything."
"You could have told me everything."
"I was ashamed." Her voice was very quiet.
"I had spent years believing it might be you.
Even when the evidence started pointing elsewhere, I had spent years thinking it.
That doesn't go away cleanly."
I looked at her for a long time.
The woman I had married.
The woman who had stood at her brother's fake grave and wept on my shoulder while knowing he was alive.
I tried to find the version of that I could understand.
I almost could.
"I need you to tell me everything Daniel found," I said.
"Not the version Wendy summarized.
Everything.
Every name, every account, every date."
"He has documents."
"He gave me the envelope."
She looked at the passenger seat — then realized I'd left it in the car.
"You left it outside?"
I stood up.
"I'll get it."
"Wait." She reached into the top drawer of my desk and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
She held it out.
"I found this.
In the back of your filing cabinet.
Behind the insurance binders."
I took it.
It was a transfer confirmation.
Dated six years ago.
Routed through a shell company I had never heard of.
Signed with my name.
My signature.
Exactly right.
Except I had never signed it.
"Reeves built a deeper trail than Daniel knew about," I said.
"Yes."
"He put documents inside my own house."
"Wendy thinks he had access at some point.
Before the guest cottage.
Before we were careful."
I looked at the signature again.
The loop on the J.
The way the last letter trailed.
It was good.
It was very good.
"I need a lawyer," I said.
"I already called one," Jessi said.
"This morning.
Before you came home.
She can be here within the hour."
I looked up.
"You called a lawyer this morning?"
"I found that document three days ago." Jessi's jaw was tight.
"I've been trying to decide what to do with it ever since."
"And?"
"And I decided that whatever you are — whatever you did or didn't do — this document is forged.
And whoever forged it has been inside our home." Her eyes were steady now.
"That's not something I'm willing to leave alone."
It was the first moment since the parking lot that I felt something other than cold.
"Call her," I said.
"Tell her to come now."
Jessi reached for her phone.
Then she stopped.
"There's one more thing," she said.
"The lawyer I called — she used to work for the firm that handled your company's compliance audits.
She left two years ago.
She left because she found something she wasn't supposed to find." Jessi looked at me.
"She found your name on a list of people Reeves had flagged as potential problems.
People he was building files on.
You were on it."
The paper in my hand felt heavier.
"He wasn't just framing Daniel," I said.
May you like
"No," Jessi said.
"Daniel was practice."
