Chapter 6: The Woman Who Ran
Marcus wanted to call Gerald immediately.
I made him wait.
"She's in Cancún," he said.
"She bought a one-way ticket.
Now she's texting you from an unknown number asking to meet alone.
That is not someone who wants to help you."
"She didn't say she wanted to help me."
"She said she wanted to talk.
Alone.
Without attorneys.
That's the same play Damian tried."
"Damian was trying to slow the audit." I read the text again.
"Chloe already ran.
She doesn't need to slow anything.
She needs something else."
"What?"
"I don't know yet." I typed back: *Call me.
Now.
On this number.*
The phone rang forty seconds later.
Chloe's voice was different from the ballroom.
The performance was gone.
What was left sounded younger and considerably less certain.
"I didn't know about the LLC," she said, before I could speak.
"I want you to know that."
"All right."
"The money he transferred to me — he told me it was a bonus.
A performance bonus from a discretionary fund.
I didn't ask questions I should have asked." A pause.
"I know that doesn't make it better."
"No," I said.
"It doesn't."
"I'm not calling to make excuses." Her voice steadied slightly.
"I'm calling because Damian called me this morning.
He told me the audit was going to find the LLC transfers and that when it did, he was going to tell the auditors that the structure was my idea.
That I approached him about it."
Marcus was watching my face.
I kept it still.
"He's going to blame you for the LLC," I said.
"He's going to try.
And I don't have — I'm not a lawyer.
I don't have anyone in my corner." Her voice cracked slightly on the last word.
"You do.
You have Gerald Foss and the Sterling Group and your father and your brothers.
I have a one-way ticket to Cancún and a phone I bought at the airport."
The coffee shop noise in the background filtered through the line.
She was somewhere public.
Careful.
"What do you have that I would want?" I asked.
A breath.
"I have his phone."
I sat very still.
"His personal phone," she said.
"Not the company one.
The one he used for everything he didn't want on record.
He left it in my apartment two weeks ago.
I don't think he realized." A pause.
"I've read some of what's on it.
Alyssa — there are messages going back four years.
Conversations with Thomas about the LLC.
Conversations with the CFO who resigned.
And conversations about you."
"About me."
"About the trust.
About the shares.
About how to — " She stopped.
"About how to get you to sign over your stake voluntarily.
He had a plan.
A long one.
Friday night wasn't spontaneous.
He had been building toward it for at least eighteen months."
The conference room was very quiet.
"He was going to humiliate you publicly," Chloe said.
"Make you feel worthless enough to sign whatever he put in front of you.
He calculated that you were too proud to fight back in public and too private to call your family." Another pause.
"He told me you were estranged from your father.
That you hadn't spoken in years."
"We had a difficult period," I said.
"We worked through it."
"He didn't know that."
"No.
He didn't."
Marcus had his hand flat on the table.
Waiting.
"Chloe," I said.
"I need you to do three things.
First: don't go back to the US without speaking to Gerald Foss.
I'm going to text you his number.
Second: send me a photograph of the phone so I know it's real.
Third: don't tell Damian you called me."
"He'll figure it out."
"Eventually.
But not today." I paused.
"If the phone contains what you say it contains, and if you cooperate fully with the audit, Gerald will make sure your cooperation is on record.
I can't promise you more than that.
But a person who came forward is treated differently than a person who had to be found."
Silence.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"One more thing." I kept my voice level.
"The necklace.
The fifty-thousand-dollar necklace."
A long pause.
"Yes."
"That money came from the trust."
"I know," she said.
"I know that now." Her voice dropped to something that was almost inaudible.
"I'm sorry.
For Friday night.
For what I said to you.
I was performing.
He coached me on what to say." A breath.
"That doesn't make it less cruel.
I know that too."
I didn't tell her it was fine.
It wasn't fine.
"Send me the photograph," I said, and ended the call.
Marcus exhaled slowly.
"The phone."
"If it's real, it's everything."
"And if she's playing you?"
"Then we find out when she sends the photograph." I set my own phone on the table.
"But Marcus — he coached her.
He planned Friday night eighteen months in advance.
He chose the venue, the audience, the exact words designed to make me feel too ashamed to call Dad."
Marcus's jaw tightened.
"He knew about the estrangement," I said.
"He knew I'd been keeping the family at a distance.
He used that."
"He underestimated when you repaired it."
"He underestimated a lot of things."
My phone buzzed.
A photograph.
Damian's phone, screen lit, showing a message thread with a contact saved only as *T* — and the first visible line of the most recent message read: *she won't call Sterling.
I know her.
She'll sign and disappear.*
Marcus looked at the photograph for a long time.
"When did he send that?" he asked.
I zoomed in on the timestamp.
"Thursday night," I said.
May you like
"The night before the anniversary party."
The night before he threw the papers at my feet.
