Chapter 5: Nine O'Clock
Patricia's instructions were specific.
I was to go to the meeting.
I was to say as little as possible.
I was to let Daniel talk.
"People who believe they are in control," she said, "will tell you everything you need if you give them enough silence to fill."
She had spent the night filing an emergency motion to freeze the Marsh-Wentworth Family Trust account pending fraud investigation.
By seven in the morning, she had a judge's signature.
I didn't know that yet when I walked into the office at five minutes to nine.
Daniel was already there.
He was standing at the window of our shared conference room, coffee in hand, looking out at the city the way a man looks at something he believes he owns.
He turned when I came in.
His face arranged itself into concern.
"Austin.
God, I'm glad you're okay.
What happened last night — your mother called me, she was beside herself—"
"Sit down, Daniel."
He paused.
Something moved behind his eyes.
Then he smiled and sat.
"Of course.
How's Irene?
The baby?"
"They're both stable."
"Thank God." He shook his head.
"She must have been terrified."
"She was," I said.
"She'd been terrified for months."
A beat of silence.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
I put the blue folder on the table between us.
He looked at it.
He didn't touch it.
"I found this under our bed last night," I said.
"Irene had been keeping it.
She told the paramedics to make sure I found it."
Daniel's coffee cup went still in his hand.
"I don't know what that is," he said.
"You wrote most of it."
The smile stayed on his face, but it stopped reaching his eyes.
"Austin, whatever your mother told Irene, whatever she put in some folder to make herself look like the victim here—"
"My mother didn't compile bank transfer records," I said.
"She didn't forge my signature on a trust document.
And she didn't register the Marsh-Wentworth Family Trust with herself as sole secondary director."
The smile disappeared.
"Where did you get that information?"
"The same place Patricia Hale got it when she filed the fraud motion this morning."
Daniel set his coffee cup down very carefully.
"You went to a lawyer."
"I went to my uncle.
He had already gone to a lawyer." I leaned forward.
"The trust account is frozen, Daniel.
As of seven-fifteen this morning."
He stood up.
The chair scraped back hard.
"You have no idea what you're doing.
That trust was a legitimate structure to protect the company's assets—"
"From whom?"
"From Irene." His voice cracked open.
The careful surface broke and something uglier came through.
"She was going to take everything, Austin.
A woman you knew for eight months before you married her, and you handed her joint access to accounts it took us a decade to build.
I was protecting the company.
I was protecting you."
"By forging my signature."
"By making a decision you were too blind to make yourself."
I stood up.
"The police have my recording from last night," I said.
"They have my mother on video threatening my pregnant wife.
They have Carla on video with the hammer.
And now Patricia has the folder." I picked it up from the table.
"You had eleven years of my trust, Daniel.
You used it to build something that was going to take everything from my wife and my child while I was on a plane."
He straightened.
The ugliness receded.
The careful surface came back.
"You'll never prove the signature was forged," he said quietly.
"My name isn't on that page."
"No," I said.
"But your messages to my mother are.
And my mother is currently sitting in a police station deciding how much of this she wants to carry alone."
Daniel went very still.
For the first time since I had walked into the room, he looked like a man who was calculating whether he had already lost.
His phone buzzed on the table.
He glanced at it.
His attorney's name was on the screen.
He picked it up and walked out without another word.
I stood in the conference room alone and looked out the window at the city.
Then I called Patricia.
"He's calling his lawyer," I said.
"Good," she said.
"That means he's scared.
How did he look when you mentioned the frozen account?"
"Like a man who just found out the floor wasn't where he thought it was."
"Perfect," she said.
"Now go to the hospital.
May you like
Be with your wife.
Let me work."
