Chapter 10
By the time we reached her office, Harbor Crown had become the only thing anyone inside Wolfe Meridian wanted to discuss.
I knew because my phone started filling with messages from people who had ignored me for years.
A former assistant.
A project manager.
The wife of one of Damian’s partners.
Two numbers I did not recognize.
Then came a text from Celeste Wolfe.
You have no idea what you are interfering with.
I read it twice.
Mara noticed.
“His mother?”
I handed her the phone.
She read the message and gave it back.
“Do not respond.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
I sat in the small conference room beside her office.
Nothing about it resembled Damian’s world.
No marble table.
No river view.
No art chosen by consultants.
Just an oak table, six chairs, two windows facing another building, and an old radiator clanking beneath the sill.
I loved it immediately.
At 2:17 p.m., one of Harbor Crown’s investment counsels requested verification of the title chain before approving additional funding.
At 2:41, the administrative lender asked Wolfe Meridian to reconcile the conflicting ownership representations.
At 3:05, Damian called eleven times in six minutes.
I did not answer.
At 3:22, the board’s audit committee requested copies of the same records.
That surprised Mara.
“They moved faster than I expected.”
“Is that bad?”
“It means they were already nervous about something.”
My stomach turned.
“Something else?”
“Maybe.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Mara looked at me.
“We do not go looking for another scandal.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that.”
“Yes, you were.”
She softened.
“Clara, the documents you found are enough to require an answer.”
I stared at the tablet.
“What if the answer is simple?”
“Then the financing resumes and everybody goes home.”
“And Damian?”
“He remains a cruel ex-husband.”
I almost smiled.
“That is allowed to be the whole story.”
It should have comforted me.
Instead, I realized something unsettling.
Part of me wanted the documents to be explainable.
Not because I wanted Damian to win.
Because if they were not explainable, it meant I had spent eight years beside a man whose world had been more false than I understood.
At four, I went to collect my box.
Mara came with me.
The doorman, Raymond, stood behind the marble desk where he had greeted me almost every day for six years.
He looked ashamed.
“Mrs.
Wolfe.”
“Bennett.”
He swallowed.
“Ms.