Chapter 5: The Man Who Sold the Introduction
My attorney's name was Patricia Wren.
I had hired her eight weeks before the wedding, when the first transfer record had surfaced and I'd understood that whatever was coming, I needed someone who specialized in financial fraud and family law and who had never heard the name Hale before I said it.
She answered on the second ring.
"Tell me where you are," she said.
"Still at the estate.
I've confronted Derek.
He grabbed my arm — I'm not hurt, but it happened.
Brenda is with him.
They're calling someone."
"Get out of the house," Patricia said.
"Right now.
Don't wait.
Don't go back upstairs."
"I need five more minutes."
"Chloe—"
"Ruth is still inside.
I'm not leaving without speaking to her first."
A pause.
"Two minutes.
Then you walk out the front door and get in a car."
I found Ruth in the hallway outside the kitchen, her coat already on.
"You heard," I said.
"The study door doesn't close properly," she said.
"It hasn't for twenty years.
Brenda knows.
She just forgets when she's angry."
"I need you to make a statement," I said.
"To my attorney.
What you told me tonight, what you know about the Trust, what you've seen in thirty-one years in this family.
I need it in writing."
Ruth looked at me for a long moment.
"Thomas will divorce me," she said.
"He might," I said.
"I won't pretend otherwise."
She nodded slowly.
"I know.
I've been pretending otherwise for thirty-one years." She picked up her handbag from the hall table.
"I'll call my own attorney in the morning.
Give me your number and I'll have her contact yours."
I typed my number into her phone.
"Ruth." I looked at her.
"Why did you really knock on that door?
You could have stayed quiet.
You've been quiet for thirty-one years."
She looked past me toward the study, where Derek's voice had risen again behind the closed door.
"Because you smiled," she said.
"When he threw that rag at you.
You smiled.
And I knew you weren't broken.
I knew you were already planning." She met my eyes.
"I never got to plan.
I want to watch someone else do it."
I squeezed her hand once.
Then I walked to the front door and opened it.
The morning air was cold and clean.
My car was at the end of the drive where I had parked it the day before — deliberately, away from the other vehicles, pointing toward the gate.
I got in.
I called Patricia back.
"I'm out," I said.
"Good.
Now listen carefully, because the next seventy-two hours matter more than anything else."
"I'm listening."
"Gerald Foss," she said.
"We need to move on him before Derek does.
If Derek reaches him first and they align their story, the paper trail becomes harder to prosecute.
I need you to get me everything you have on Foss by tonight."
I looked in the rearview mirror.
The estate sat behind me, pale stone and wide windows, every light on now.
"Patricia," I said.
"Gerald Foss came to my engagement party.
He hugged me.
He told Derek he was the luckiest man alive."
"I know," she said.
"He was my father's partner for nineteen years."
"I know that too."
I put the car in gear.
"Then let's make sure he answers for every single one of them," I said.
I drove through the gate and didn't look back.
But three miles down the road, my phone rang again.
Unknown number.
The same unknown number that had sent me the message about the Trust.
I pulled over.
I answered.
"Chloe," said a voice I didn't recognize.
A man.
Older.
May you like
Careful.
"Before you go to your attorney with what you have — there's something about your father you need to know first."
