"My flight to London was canceled, so I came home at 1:47 a.m.

The name at the top of every message was Daniel Marsh.

My business partner of eleven years.

I read the first message twice before I accepted what I was reading.

*Margaret: She's pregnant.

That changes the timeline.

We need to move before he updates the will.*

*Daniel: Agreed.

I'll handle the accounts.

You handle the house.*

*Margaret: She won't give up the safe code.

We may need to push harder.*

*Daniel: Do what you have to do.

Just don't leave marks he can photograph.*

My hands were shaking by the time I reached the photographs.

They were printouts from what looked like a shared cloud folder.

Bank transfer confirmations.

Three of them.

Each one moving a significant sum from a joint holding account I shared with Daniel into a private account I had never seen before.

The account name was listed as Marsh-Wentworth Family Trust.

A trust I had never signed.

I turned to the next page.

It was a document.

Two pages, dense with legal language.

At the bottom was a signature line with my name printed beneath it — and above the line, a signature that was not mine.

Someone had forged my name on a trust document eight months ago.

I sat there on the floor of my own bedroom, rain still drying on my jacket, and I thought about every conversation I'd had with Daniel in the past year.

Every lunch.

Every handshake.

Every time he'd said, *"Austin, you can trust me with this."*

I thought about the week Irene and I had told people about the pregnancy.

Daniel had been the first person I called.

I stood up.

I put the folder inside my jacket.

I walked to the window and watched the last police car pull away from the curb, my mother's face a pale shape behind the glass.

My phone buzzed.

A text from Daniel.

*Heard about the incident at your place.

Terrible.

Let me know if you need anything.*

I stared at the message for a long time.

Then I typed back: *All good.

Can you meet me at the office tomorrow at nine?*

His reply came in under a minute.

*Of course.

I'll be there.*

I set the phone face-down on the windowsill.

He didn't know I was home.

He didn't know about the folder.

He didn't know that the recording on my phone now included everything Margaret had said about needing papers by tomorrow — and that tomorrow was today.

I had one night.

I called the hospital first.

The nurse told me Irene was resting, the baby's heartbeat was strong, and I could come in the morning.

"Tell her I called," I said.

"Tell her the folder is safe."

A pause.

"Sir?"

"She'll understand."

I hung up and opened my laptop.

I had eleven years of shared financial records with Daniel Marsh.

I had always trusted him to manage the detail work.

I had signed documents he prepared without reading every line because that was what partners did.

That was what I had believed.

I started at the beginning.

The oldest files.

The ones from before Irene, before Paradise Valley, before any of this.

By four in the morning, I had found six more transfers I could not explain.

And one email thread — buried inside a folder labeled *Admin Misc* — that made the bank transfers look minor.

Daniel had been negotiating to sell my share of the company.

Without my knowledge.

Without my consent.

To a holding group that, when I searched the registration, listed one director.

Margaret Wentworth.

My mother.

I closed the laptop.

The room was very quiet.

Outside, the first gray light was starting at the edges of the sky.

I picked up the blue folder, opened it to the forged signature page, and took a photograph of it with my phone.

Then I called the one person I knew I could trust completely — the only person who had warned me about Daniel eighteen months ago and whom I had not listened to.

My uncle, Robert Wentworth.

He picked up on the second ring.

"Austin." His voice was alert.