Chapter 5: What Marcus Knew
I didn't sleep that night.
The hospital gave me a private room, and I lay in the dark with the folder on the blanket beside me and my phone face-up on the pillow, waiting for the unknown number to message again.
It didn't.
At six in the morning I called my mother, who had gone home to be with the children.
"They're fine," she said before I could ask.
"Ethan made toast.
Sophie is still asleep."
"Don't tell them anything yet."
"I know." A pause.
"Did you sleep?"
"No."
"Neither did I." Another pause, longer.
"I let that woman into your house.
I let her into the study."
"Mom, you didn't know."
"I should have felt something was wrong."
"You couldn't have known," I said.
"He fooled me for three years.
He fooled me completely."
She was quiet for a moment.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find out what's in that recording."
At nine o'clock I received a text from the unknown number.
An address.
A coffee shop twelve minutes from the hospital.
Midday.
I told my nurse I needed a short discharge for a personal appointment.
She looked at my chart, looked at me, and said I was technically still a post-operative patient and should not be walking long distances.
"I'll take a cab," I said.
She handed me a printed aftercare sheet with the expression of someone who knew they had already lost the argument.
The coffee shop was small and warm.
I arrived five minutes early and chose a table near the back with a clear view of the door.
A woman walked in at exactly noon.
She was perhaps sixty.
Silver hair cut short.
She wore a grey coat and carried a leather briefcase that had seen better decades.
She scanned the room, found me, and walked over without hesitating.
"You're the wife," she said.
"I am."
She sat down.
"My name is Carole.
I worked as a bookkeeper for Daniel's company for eleven years.
He let me go fourteen months ago." She set the briefcase on the table.
"He told the board I had made accounting errors.
He showed them a report."
"Had you?"
"No." She said it without heat, just fact.
"The errors were his.
I found them, which is why he needed me gone before I found the rest."
She opened the briefcase and placed a USB drive on the table between us.
"Everything is on there.
The Hargrove transfers.
The second company — that one is registered in his brother's wife's maiden name, which is why it's harder to find.
And the recording."
"What's on the recording?"
Carole folded her hands on the table.
"Eight months ago, Daniel had a meeting in his office.
He didn't know I was still in the building.
I had come back for something I'd left behind." She paused.
"He was on the phone with Marcus.
I recorded it on my personal phone through the door."
"What did they say?"
"Marcus wanted more money.
He said he had proof of the affair and proof of the transfers, and if Daniel didn't pay him another fifty thousand, he would go to you directly." She looked at me steadily.
"Daniel told him to wait.
He said, and I am quoting exactly — he said, 'She's about to give me a kidney.
Once I'm recovered and the divorce is filed, she won't have the energy or the money to fight any of it.
Let her think everything is fine for a few more months.'"
The coffee cup in front of me had gone cold.
I hadn't touched it.
"He planned it," I said.
"He planned to file for divorce after the transplant."
"Yes."
"While I was still recovering."
"Yes."
I looked at the USB drive on the table.
"Why are you bringing this to me now?" I said.
"You've had this for eight months."
Carole was quiet for a moment.
"I have a daughter," she said.
"She's thirty-one.
Her husband has been lying to her for two years and she can't see it yet." She looked down at her hands.
"I kept telling myself it wasn't my business to interfere in other people's marriages.
That I should just use what I had to protect myself legally and move on." She looked up.
"Then I found out you donated a kidney to him.
And I thought — someone has to tell her."
I picked up the USB drive.
My hand was steady.
"Thank you," I said.
"There's one more thing," Carole said.
"The second woman.
Her name is Patricia Holt.
She's a property developer.
The second company — the one in Marcus's wife's maiden name — it was set up to funnel payments to her.
It's not a romantic relationship."
"Then what is it?"
Carole's expression shifted.
"That's what I couldn't fully work out.
But the payments started six months before Daniel's kidneys began failing.
And they stopped the week he was admitted to hospital." She paused.
"I think she knows something about why he got sick."
I stared at her.
"I don't have proof of that part," she said quickly.
"I want to be clear.
That's only what the timeline suggested to me.
It may be nothing."
May you like
But she didn't look like she thought it was nothing.
And neither did I.
