Chapter 3: Her Name in His Silence
I asked him one more time.
"Julian.
Who is there with you?"
"It's nobody.
A colleague.
She stopped by to drop off—"
"Her name."
A pause that lasted exactly long enough to tell me everything.
"Renata," he said.
I sat down on Dana's couch without meaning to.
My legs just stopped working.
Renata.
His former business partner.
The woman I had asked him about fourteen months ago when I found a receipt for dinner for two on a Tuesday night he claimed he'd spent alone at the office.
He'd looked at me with genuine-seeming confusion.
*Renata?
She moved to Portland.
Why would you even bring her up?*
I had believed him.
I had apologized for asking.
"Why is Renata in my house at eleven o'clock at night?" I said.
"She's helping me go through some paperwork.
With Mom's situation and you being gone, I needed—"
"What paperwork, Julian?"
"Business stuff.
You wouldn't understand the details."
Something cold settled in my chest.
Not anger.
Something quieter and more dangerous than anger.
"Put her on," I said.
"That's not necessary."
"Put.
Her.
On."
A shuffle.
A muffled exchange I couldn't fully hear.
Then a voice, careful and measured.
"Hello, Claire."
I hadn't heard that voice in over a year.
It was the same as I remembered.
Smooth.
Practiced.
"Renata," I said.
"How long have you been back from Portland?"
A short pause.
"A few months."
"And how long have you been coming to my house?"
"Claire, I think you're misreading—"
"How long?"
Silence.
I heard Julian in the background.
"Just hang up.
She's being—"
I didn't wait for him to finish the sentence.
I ended the call.
Dana appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, holding a mug, reading my face.
"How bad?" she said.
"Renata is in the house."
Dana set the mug down on the counter without taking her eyes off me.
"The one from—"
"Yes."
She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.
"What do you need?"
"I need to think."
"Then think out loud."
I pressed my hands flat on the table.
"Evelyn broke into the locked drawer.
She found the red folder.
She's already called a lawyer.
And Julian has Renata in the house at eleven at night going through paperwork."
Dana was quiet for a moment.
"What's in the red folder, Claire?"
"Everything," I said.
"Every transfer I made to his company.
Every personal expense he ran through the business account.
Receipts.
Bank statements.
Copies of the original deed.
A letter from my aunt's estate attorney."
"So if Evelyn's lawyer sees that folder—"
"They'll try to reframe it.
Make it look like I was hiding assets.
Or controlling finances without his knowledge." I looked at her.
"Which is exactly backwards.
But backwards is enough to create a legal mess."
Dana leaned forward.
"Do you have copies?"
"Everything in that folder is already scanned and stored in three places he doesn't know about."
She let out a slow breath.
"Okay.
So they can't actually hurt you with it."
"Not with the documents," I said.
"But if Renata has been helping him go through company records, she may already know which transactions to question.
She knows how that business was structured.
She helped build it."
Dana looked at me steadily.
"She helped build it with your money."
"Yes."
"Does she know that?"
I thought about it.
"She knows Julian raised early capital from a private source.
Whether he told her it was me—" I shook my head.
"I don't know."
My phone lit up on the table between us.
A text from Julian.
*You're overreacting.
Come home and we can talk like adults.*
I turned the phone face-down.
Dana watched me do it.
May you like
"What's your next move?"
"First thing tomorrow," I said, "I'm calling my attorney."
