Chapter 3: What He Should Have Said in August
"After," Emma said.
Adrian declined the call without looking away from her.
The phone went dark.
He slid it into his jacket pocket and sat down on the stone planter beside her — not close, but close enough that she felt the deliberateness of it.
"Three months ago," he began, "I was in the Marston Group offices going through a contract dispute.
One of our junior attorneys had flagged a signature discrepancy on a property transfer.
It wasn't urgent.
I almost didn't look at it that day."
Emma waited.
"The property was a waterfront unit on Crestline Pier.
Two bedrooms.
Purchased eight months ago." He paused.
"The buyer was listed as Tessa Anne Bennett."
Emma's throat tightened.
"Tessa doesn't have that kind of money."
"No," Adrian said.
"She doesn't."
"Then how—"
"The down payment came from a personal account I didn't recognize.
It took my attorney two days to trace it.
The account was opened fourteen months ago.
The funds were transferred in three installments." He looked at her directly.
"The account belonged to Cole."
The ferry horn sounded again across the water.
Emma heard it distantly, as though it were coming from another city entirely.
"He bought her an apartment," she said.
"Eight months ago.
Three months before you announced the engagement."
Emma stood up.
She didn't know why.
Her legs just needed to move.
"So when he proposed to me—"
"The apartment was already in her name."
She turned away from him.
The harbor stretched out ahead of her, gray and flat and enormous.
A gull landed on the railing twenty feet away and stared at nothing.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Adrian was quiet for a moment.
"Because I didn't know what it meant yet.
I told myself it could have been a gift.
A loan.
Something with a legitimate explanation." He stopped.
"I was wrong to wait.
I know that."
"Three months, Adrian."
"Yes."
"I spent three months planning a wedding."
"I know."
She turned back to face him.
The coat was still around her shoulders.
She hadn't noticed until now how cold she'd been before he put it there.
"Does Cole know you found out?"
"No."
"Does Tessa?"
"I don't believe so."
Emma pressed her fingers against her temple.
The seating chart was still in her hand — she'd carried it out of the hotel without realizing.
She looked at it now.
Tessa's name.
Family table.
Right beside the bride and groom.
"She planned this," Emma said.
It wasn't a question.
"The timing suggests it was deliberate, yes."
"She didn't just fall for him.
She positioned herself."
Adrian said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
Emma set the seating chart down on the planter.
She smoothed one corner with her thumb, a small automatic gesture, the kind of thing your hands do when your mind has gone somewhere it can't follow.
"There's more, isn't there," she said.
Adrian's jaw shifted slightly.
"Why do you think that?"
"Because you said you should have told me three months ago.
Not that you found something three months ago.
The way you said it — it sounds like the apartment was only the beginning."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"You're very perceptive."
"I'm a pediatric nurse, Adrian.
I spend my days reading people who can't tell me what's wrong." She met his eyes.
"So tell me what's wrong."
His phone lit up again.
This time it was a message, not a call.
He glanced at it, and something in his expression shifted — not alarm, exactly, but a sharpening.
"Cole and Tessa have just left the hotel," he said.
Emma went still.
"How do you know that?"
He turned the phone so she could see the screen.
A brief message from a contact labeled only with initials: *They're moving.
Heading toward the parking structure.
Cole's car.*
Emma stared at it.
"You had someone watching the hotel."
"I had someone watching my brother," Adrian said carefully.
"There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"I thought so when I set it up." He stood.
"I'm less certain now."
The gull on the railing lifted off without warning and disappeared over the water.
Emma watched it go.
"You set up surveillance on Cole before today," she said slowly.
"Before I walked out of that hotel.
Before I sat down on this planter."
"Yes."
"Which means you already knew something was wrong."
"Yes."
She looked at him.
"What exactly were you watching for?"
Adrian reached into his jacket and removed a folded envelope.
He held it out to her without a word.
Emma took it.
The paper was heavy stock, cream-colored, the kind used for formal correspondence.
Her name was written on the front in handwriting she didn't recognize.
"What is this?"
May you like
"Open it," he said quietly.
"And then I'll tell you everything."
