Chapter 8: What Gwen Did Not Know
Three days after the accounts were frozen, Gwen called me.
I almost didn't answer.
Then I thought about what Isabela had said — *I wonder sometimes about the woman after me* — and I picked up.
"I need to talk to you," Gwen said.
Her voice was different from the careful, childish tone I had heard in my kitchen.
Smaller.
Less rehearsed.
"All right."
"Can we meet?
Not at the house.
Somewhere neutral."
We met at a café two miles from the neighborhood.
She was already there when I arrived, no makeup, hair pulled back.
She looked younger without the performance of her.
She also looked frightened.
She waited until I sat down.
"He told me the accounts were frozen because of you," she said.
"He said you were trying to destroy him out of spite."
"Is that what you believe?"
She looked down at her coffee.
"I don't know what I believe anymore."
"What changed?"
"He asked me to sign something.
Yesterday." She looked up.
"His attorney came to the apartment — the apartment he pays for — with a document.
It said that I had no knowledge of how any of the financial arrangements were structured.
That everything between us was personal and voluntary." Her jaw tightened.
"I've seen that kind of document before.
My mother's employer made her sign one once, when she witnessed something at work that they didn't want her to talk about."
I waited.
"I didn't sign it," she said.
Something shifted in the air between us.
"Gwen," I said carefully.
"Did Christopher ever tell you where the money came from?
The apartment, your brother's business loan, your parents' house?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"He said it was his.
His personal investments."
"It wasn't.
It came from Pinnacle Crest's operational accounts.
He moved it through a holding company in the Cayman Islands.
That's what the civil claim is about.
That's what the SEC is looking at."
Her face went very still.
"The SEC," she said.
"Yes."
"He told me—" She stopped.
Started again.
"He told me that you had made a complaint out of anger.
That it would go nowhere.
That he had people who would handle it."
"He has people," I said.
"They're currently looking for ways to minimize their own exposure."
She stared at the table.
Her hands were wrapped around her cup so tightly her knuckles had gone pale.
"I didn't know," she said.
"About where the money came from.
I want you to know that."
"I believe you."
She looked up sharply, as if she hadn't expected that.
"There was a woman before you," I said.
"In Montevideo.
He did the same thing.
When it ended, his legal team came with a document.
She signed it because she had no choice." I paused.
"You had a choice.
You didn't sign."
Gwen's eyes filled.
She blinked hard.
"What happens to me now?" she said.
"That depends on what you do next.
My attorney will want to speak with you.
As a witness, not a defendant.
What you know about the arrangement, what he told you, what you saw — all of it matters."
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Not carefully.
Not performing anything.
"He told me his marriage was over," she said.
"That you had grown apart.
That you were only together for appearances."
"I know."
"I'm sorry." Her voice cracked on it.
"I'm sorry.
I know that doesn't help anything."
I looked at her for a long moment.
Twenty-seven years old.
Sitting in a café with the woman whose husband she had believed loved her, learning that the apartment above her head had been bought with stolen money and that she was not the first.
"It helps a little," I said.
"More than you'd think."
May you like
She called Daniel's office that afternoon.
She gave a full statement two days later.
