Chapter 8: Chloe
She was younger than I had imagined.
That was the first thing.
Not by a little — by enough to notice.
She was wearing the same clothes from the airport photo, slightly wrinkled now, and she was holding the velvet case in both hands in front of her like someone presenting something at a formal occasion.
She sat down across from me without being invited to.
That told me something.
"I didn't know about the forgeries," she said.
"I want to say that first."
"All right."
"I knew Daniel was moving money.
He told me it was his — that he'd built up a separate fund over the years and that your prenuptial agreement would leave him with very little when he eventually left." She set the velvet case on the desk.
"He told me the bracelet was a family piece from his side.
His grandmother's."
I looked at the case but didn't touch it.
"When did you find out the truth?"
"This morning.
When he told me the accounts were frozen and started explaining why." She looked at her hands.
"He was very calm about it.
That was the worst part.
He sat there in the airport hotel and explained that he had been systematically defrauding your company for four years and that there were federal investigators involved and that he had a plan to negotiate his way out of it." She looked up.
"He talked about it the way someone talks about a delayed flight."
"What did you do?"
"I took the bracelet and left." She nodded at the velvet case.
"I looked it up on the way here.
The transfer of controlling stock.
The ceremony.
I found a photograph of your mother wearing it." She paused.
"I'm sorry.
For my part in this.
I didn't know the full picture, but I knew enough that I should have asked more questions."
I opened the velvet case.
The bracelet was exactly as I remembered it.
My mother had worn it on ordinary days as often as important ones — grocery runs, school pickups, Saturday mornings at the dining room table while Warren Pryce explained balance sheets to a nineteen-year-old who was paying closer attention than anyone realized.
I closed the case.
"Did Daniel tell you about Gerald Ashworth?" I asked.
Chloe's expression shifted.
"He mentioned the name.
He said it carefully, like it was supposed to mean something."
"It does." I looked at her.
"I need to ask you something directly.
Did Daniel give you anything to hold for him?
Documents, a drive, anything he asked you to keep safe?"
She was quiet for just a moment too long.
"He gave me a phone," she said.
"A second phone.
He said it was a backup and asked me to keep it in my bag.
I didn't think about it until just now." She reached into her bag and placed a black phone on the desk beside the velvet case.
"I don't know what's on it."
I picked it up.
It was locked, but the screen showed a notification — a cloud backup app, still syncing.
I called Grace.
"Daniel is on his way back," I said.
"He says he has records on Ashworth.
But I'm sitting here with a phone he gave to Chloe to hold, and it's been syncing to a backup app since at least this morning."
"Don't touch the backup," Grace said immediately.
"I'm sending someone to you in twenty minutes.
Don't let that phone out of your sight."
I set it down.
Chloe was watching me.
"Is it bad?"
"I don't know yet." I looked at her.
"You came here and gave me the bracelet and the phone.
You didn't have to do either."
"No," she said.
"I didn't."
"I'm going to need a formal statement from you.
About Daniel, about what he told you, about the timeline.
Grace will walk you through it."
Chloe nodded.
She looked, for the first time since she'd sat down, like someone who had made a decision and felt the weight of it lift slightly.
"The bracelet," she said.
"It's really beautiful."
I looked at the velvet case.
"My mother wore it every day," I said.
"She said it reminded her that the company was built by hand, not by accident."
I picked up the case and put it in my desk drawer.
"She was right," I said.
The phone on my desk kept syncing.
May you like
Outside, Grace's investigator was already on the way.
And somewhere across the city, Daniel was in a taxi, heading toward a negotiation he did not yet know he had already lost.
