Chapter 2
The message was short.
Please tell me honestly if we are rushing to conclusions. Claire is blaming herself, and I don’t want her carrying this if the problem could be mine.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
The Grant I knew during the divorce would never have written those words.
But the date was unmistakable.
“What happened between this email and the divorce?” I whispered.
Rebecca shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Dominic stared at the page with an intensity I could not interpret.
Then he asked a question that made Rebecca look sharply at him.
“Was there an attachment?”
She checked the printed record.
“Yes.”
“Can you open it?”
“I didn’t print the attachment.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was corrupted in the archive.”
Dominic went very still.
“What was the file name?”
Rebecca checked.
“Moretti_Confidential.pdf.”
My heart stopped.
I turned toward Dominic.
He did not look surprised.
He looked resigned.
“What is that?” I asked.
He remained silent.
“Dominic.”
He finally met my eyes.
“My family had business dealings with Kingsley Holdings years ago.”
“That doesn’t explain why Grant sent my fertility doctor a file with your name on it.”
“No.”
“Then explain it.”
Dominic glanced at Lily before answering.
“Your divorce wasn’t the first time someone inside Kingsley Holdings altered records to protect the company.”
The room seemed suddenly colder.
“What records?”
“Financial records.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
I stared at Dominic.
“And you knew this?”
“I knew someone inside Kingsley had done it. I never knew who.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because when we met, you were my consultant, not my investigation.”
“That changed.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
His face softened.
“Much sooner than I intended.”
Despite everything, my chest tightened.
Then Rebecca’s phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She answered, listened for several seconds, then hung up.
“That was my office.”
She looked directly at me.
“Grant just postponed the wedding.”
I blinked.
“Postponed?”
“Twenty minutes before the ceremony.”
Dominic frowned.
Rebecca continued.
“He left St. Bartholomew’s with his attorney.”
“Where is he going?”
She hesitated.
“Here.”
I instinctively looked at Lily.
Dominic crossed the room.
“He doesn’t enter unless Claire wants him here.”
I appreciated that more than he knew.
But something had shifted inside me.
Six months ago, Grant’s arrival would have terrified me.
Today, my daughter slept safely beside me, my attorney was present, and a man who cared about me was standing close enough that I did not feel alone.
I looked at Rebecca.
“Let him come.”
Dominic’s eyebrows lifted.
“I need to hear what happened,” I said. “Not for him.”
I looked at Lily.
“For me.”
Grant arrived forty minutes later.
He was still wearing his tuxedo.
No photographers.
No entourage.
No Sienna.
For the first time in all the years I had known him, Grant Kingsley entered a room without seeming certain he belonged there.
He stopped near the door when he saw Lily.
His face lost every trace of color.
“She’s beautiful,” he said.
I said nothing.
Grant swallowed.
Then he looked at Dominic.
“I remember you.”
Dominic’s expression remained unreadable.
“Good.”
Grant turned back to me.
“Claire, I need to ask you something.”
Rebecca rose.
“Anything you say here should be said with the understanding that I represent Claire.”
Grant barely looked at her.
“That’s fine.”
He reached inside his jacket and removed a folded document.
“I found this in Sienna’s apartment this morning.”
My pulse accelerated.
“Why were you in her apartment on your wedding day?”
“Because she forgot the marriage license.”
That almost sounded ridiculous.
But Grant did not smile.
He unfolded the paper.
“It was inside a locked desk.”
He handed it to Rebecca.
She read the first page.
Then the second.
Her face changed.
“Where did she get this?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
Rebecca passed the document to me.
It was an old agreement between Kingsley Holdings and Moretti Development.
Six years old.
Confidential.
At the bottom was Dominic’s signature.
And beside it was another name.
Sienna Vale.
I looked at Dominic.
“You knew her six years ago?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
Grant stared at him.
“That’s why I postponed my wedding.”
Then he said the sentence that changed every assumption I had made about all three of them.
“Sienna didn’t meet me when she became my assistant.”
He pointed at Dominic.
“She came to Kingsley Holdings because of him.”
That frightened me more than denial would have.
Grant stood near the hospital door with his tuxedo jacket unbuttoned and his tie hanging loose around his collar. Hours earlier, he had called expecting to celebrate the beginning of his new marriage by reminding me of the ending of ours.
Now the wedding had been postponed, his bride was missing, and he was staring at Dominic as though six years of his life had suddenly changed shape.
I looked between them.
“Someone needs to start talking.”
Dominic pulled a chair closer but did not sit.
“Sienna worked for Moretti Development six years ago.”
“Doing what?”
“Compliance research.”
Grant gave a humorless laugh.
“That’s one description.”
Dominic ignored him.
“My father was still running most of the company then. We were negotiating a joint redevelopment project with Kingsley Holdings near the Brooklyn waterfront.”
I remembered the project vaguely.
Grant’s father, Charles Kingsley, had once called it the deal that saved their real estate division after the financial downturn.
“What happened?” I asked.
Dominic’s expression grew distant.
“Numbers stopped matching.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“What numbers?”
“Environmental remediation costs. Contractor invoices. Acquisition expenses. Nothing dramatic individually. But together they suggested someone was moving money between project accounts.”
Grant’s face tightened.
“My father accused the Morettis.”
“And mine accused the Kingsleys,” Dominic said.
“Were either of them right?”
“Partly.”
That answer surprised everyone.
Dominic finally sat.
“A junior financial officer had been redirecting funds. But before the investigation finished, several internal documents were changed. Signatures appeared on approvals that neither my father nor Charles remembered signing.”
Rebecca glanced at the agreement Grant had brought.
“And Sienna investigated?”
“She helped.”
Grant interrupted.
“She did more than help.”
Dominic’s eyes hardened slightly.
“Yes.”
He turned to me.
“Sienna discovered the altered files came from an internal administrative account used jointly during the partnership.”
“Could she identify who used it?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“The companies settled privately. The employee responsible for the missing funds was dismissed. Nobody pursued the altered records because both families wanted the project completed.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“That was convenient.”
“It was shortsighted,” Dominic said.
I studied him.
“And Sienna?”
“She left Moretti Development soon afterward.”
“Why?”
Dominic hesitated.
“Because she believed someone more senior had directed the financial officer.”
Grant folded his arms.
“And because your father refused to let her keep investigating.”
Dominic did not argue.
“That too.”
I had known Dominic for three months.
I knew how he took his coffee.
I knew he hated elevators when stairs were available.
I knew he called his widowed mother every Sunday morning and pretended the calls were brief even though they regularly lasted an hour.
But this version of him belonged to a life before me.
A complicated one.
A world built from family loyalty, old contracts, and silences everyone considered necessary.
“Did you and Sienna have a relationship?” I asked.
Grant looked at me.
Dominic did not.
“No.”
“Were you close?”
“We worked together.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He finally met my eyes.
“Yes. We were friends.”
Grant stepped forward.
“She told me you betrayed her.”
Dominic’s expression barely moved.
“She believed I chose my family over the truth.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
That simple admission unsettled me.
Dominic looked toward Lily’s bassinet.
“I was twenty-eight. My father had recently suffered a heart attack. The company employed eight hundred people. Lawyers told me a prolonged investigation could destroy the project and potentially the business.”
“So you agreed to close it.”
“Yes.”
“Even though Sienna thought someone else was involved.”
“Yes.”
“Were you wrong?”
Dominic was quiet for a moment.
“I don’t know.”
There was no excuse in his voice.
That mattered.
Grant paced once toward the window and back.
“Sienna joined Kingsley Holdings two years later.”
“Did you know?” I asked Dominic.
“No.”
Grant glanced at him.
“That part I believe.”
I stared at my ex-husband.
“You never knew she worked for Moretti?”
“No.”
“How is that possible?”
“She used her middle name professionally at Moretti. Sienna Catherine Vale. Their records listed Catherine Vale.”
Rebecca looked at the old agreement again.
“The signature says Sienna Vale.”
“Because that document was signed after she reverted to her legal name,” Dominic said.
Grant rubbed his forehead.
“She told me she had worked in compliance for a construction firm in Boston.”
“So she lied,” I said.
May you like
Grant’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
