Chapter 5: The Woman Cole Had Removed
Diane Forsythe lived in a narrow brick townhouse on Aldermere Street, four blocks from the harbor, with a brass knocker shaped like an anchor and a pot of winter heather on the front step that someone was still tending carefully.
Adrian had called ahead.
He hadn't explained why.
He'd simply said Emma Bennett needed to speak with her, and Diane had said, "I've been waiting for that call."
She opened the door before they reached it.
She was sixty-one, compact, with close-cropped silver hair and the kind of stillness that comes from spending decades in rooms full of people who underestimate you.
She looked at Emma first, then at Adrian, then stepped back to let them in.
The front room was small and ordered.
A desk along one wall, covered in neat stacks of paper.
A laptop.
Two mugs already set out on the coffee table, as though she'd known they were coming for longer than the phone call.
"Sit down," she said.
Not unkindly.
Emma sat.
Adrian remained standing near the door.
"You wrote the letter," Emma said.
Diane didn't deny it.
"I wrote it fourteen months ago and held it for eight.
I needed to be sure I had enough that he couldn't simply explain it away." She sat across from Emma.
"I'm sorry it took so long.
I know what the timing cost you."
"What did you see?"
"The beginning of it was small.
A discrepancy in a quarterly reconciliation.
Funds moving between subsidiary accounts in a pattern that didn't match any approved project.
I flagged it internally.
Cole told me I'd misread the structure.
He was very calm about it." She paused.
"He was always very calm."
"And you believed him?"
"For about two weeks.
Then I found the second discrepancy.
And the third." She opened a folder on the coffee table and turned it toward Emma.
"Over fourteen months, I tracked eleven separate fund movements.
The smallest was forty thousand dollars.
The largest was just under four hundred thousand."
Emma looked at the pages.
Columns of figures, account numbers, dates.
She wasn't a financial professional, but the pattern was visible even to her — money moving in one direction, consistently, quietly, in amounts just below the thresholds that would trigger automatic review.
"He was careful," Emma said.
"Very.
But not careful enough." Diane tapped one page.
"This transfer here — August, fourteen months ago — moved funds into an account I couldn't trace through normal channels.
It took me six weeks and a contact at a competing firm to identify the receiving entity.
It was a numbered company registered in Delaware."
"The same company that received the Harwick warehouse transfer?" Adrian asked from the doorway.
Diane looked at him.
"You found that."
"Last week."
"Then you're further along than I thought." She turned back to Emma.
"Yes.
The same company.
Cole has been building a separate financial structure for at least two years.
The warehouse transfer was the largest single move.
I believe he intended to eventually transfer other assets as well — but something accelerated his timeline."
"What?" Emma asked.
"You," Diane said simply.
Emma went still.
"The wedding," Diane continued.
"Once a marriage was formalized, certain Marston Group assets would have become significantly more complicated to move quietly.
Marital property considerations.
Increased scrutiny.
A spouse who might notice things a girlfriend wouldn't." She looked at Emma with something that wasn't quite pity but was close to it.
"I believe the engagement was, at least in part, a calculation."
The room was very quiet.
Emma heard the heating system click on somewhere in the walls.
"He proposed to me," she said, "because it was useful."
"I believe the engagement served a purpose for him, yes.
Whether there were also genuine feelings — I can't tell you that.
I only know the financial picture."
"And Tessa?" Emma asked.
Diane's expression shifted slightly.
"Your sister contacted me."
Emma's head came up.
"When?"
"Three weeks ago.
She called my personal number — I don't know how she obtained it.
She told me she knew I had information about Cole and that she wanted to meet."
"Did you?"
"No.
I didn't trust the contact.
It felt like it could have been Cole testing whether I was a threat." Diane paused.
"But the call itself told me something."
"That Tessa knew about the financial situation," Emma said.
"That Tessa was aware there was a financial situation.
Whether she understood the full scope — I genuinely don't know." Diane folded her hands.
"What I do know is that she called me before the wedding, not after.
Which means she wasn't simply caught up in a romance that got complicated."
Adrian's phone buzzed.
He looked at it and said nothing.
Emma looked at him.
"What?"
"Cole is at the Marston Group offices." He turned the phone screen toward her.
Another message from the same initials.
"He's been there for forty minutes.
He used his access card to enter the records room."
Diane stood up immediately.
"The physical contract files."
"Yes," Adrian said.
"He's going to remove them." She was already moving toward her desk.
"The originals of the Delacroix contract, the Harwick transfer authorization — if he gets those out of the building—"
"He won't," Adrian said.
He was already on the phone.
One sentence, quiet and precise: "Lock the records room.
Now.
Don't let anyone in or out until I arrive."
He ended the call and looked at Emma.
"I have to go."
Emma stood.
"I'm coming with you."
"Emma—"
"He was going to be my husband," she said.
"I'm coming."
Adrian looked at her for one moment.
Then he nodded once and moved toward the door.
Diane caught Emma's arm as she passed.
"There's one more thing," she said quietly.
"Something I didn't put in the letter because I wasn't certain." She held Emma's eyes.
"The numbered company in Delaware.
I finally traced the second registered officer last month."
Emma waited.
May you like
"It's Tessa," Diane said.
"Your sister is a co-owner of the company Cole has been funneling money into."
