Chapter 3 - Ethan’s cousin.
The man who had laughed about me behind the study door.
“Derek negotiated these documents?”
“Some of them,” my father said.
“Ethan delegated part of the process while he was handling other matters.”
I thought of Derek’s easy smile at family dinners, his extravagant jokes, and the way he always seemed to appear whenever Ethan was discussing business.
“Why would Derek want access to my trust?”
My father closed the notebook.
“I don’t know.”
But the uncertainty in his voice told me he was already considering possibilities.
“Dad, did you know I didn’t want to marry Ethan?”
He looked startled.
“Jane—”
“Did you?”
He stared at me.
Then, very slowly, he nodded.
“I knew you were unhappy about the arrangement.”
“Then why did you insist?”
His eyes grew moist.
“Because I convinced myself you would eventually understand why I thought it was necessary.”
I looked down.
There were so many things I wanted to say.
So many years of resentment collected behind my ribs.
But for the first time, my father wasn’t pretending he had all the answers.
“I loved Mom,” I whispered.
“And I trusted you to honor what she wanted for me.”
He reached across the table, then stopped before touching my hand.
“I know.”
I stood.
“I need time.”
He nodded.
“Take all the time you need.”
When I returned home, Ethan was waiting in the entrance hall.
I could tell immediately that he had been worried.
Not because he said anything, but because he was standing near the front window in shirtsleeves, holding a phone he put away as soon as he saw me.
“How was your father?”
“Confusing.”
Ethan studied me.
“Would you like some dinner?”
“Not yet.”
I began walking toward the stairs, then stopped.
“Ethan, did Derek negotiate part of our marriage agreement?”
His expression became still.
“Yes.”
“Did you know he was discussing my mother’s trust?”
“What trust?”
I turned around.
And in that moment, I understood something important.
Whatever had happened before our wedding, Ethan wasn’t the only person who had been making decisions.
Someone had been carefully arranging circumstances around both of us.
“I need to show you something.”
We spent nearly two hours in his study.
Ethan read the documents my father had given me, then compared them with the versions retained by his attorneys.
The differences were subtle.
A changed date.
A revised paragraph.
An added reference to my mother’s trust.
And the signature that wasn’t mine.
Finally, Ethan removed his glasses and placed them on the desk.
“Derek handled the final revisions.”
“Why?”
“Because I was in New York negotiating a separate agreement.
He told me everything was ready.”
“You trusted him?”
“He’s my cousin.
We’ve worked together for fifteen years.”
I watched Ethan stare at the documents.
For the first time, he looked less like a powerful businessman and more like someone confronting the possibility that a familiar relationship wasn’t what he believed it to be.
“Did Derek know my mother?”
I asked.
“No.
She died before our families began working together.”
“Then why would he be interested in her trust?”
Ethan was quiet.
Then he reached for an old company directory on his desk.
“Your mother’s transportation company had a partnership with one of our subsidiaries years ago.”
“Which subsidiary?”
He found the page.
I leaned over his shoulder.
The company listed there was no longer active.
But its former managing director was a name I recognized.
Not Derek.
Not my father.
Someone I had been seeing nearly every week since the wedding.
Brian.
For a moment, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
“Brian managed this company?”
Ethan nodded slowly.
“Before he started working directly for me.”
“Did he know my mother?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought of Brian’s careful questions, his sudden attentiveness, and the odd expression he’d worn when I asked whether I was in danger.
“What if he’s the one who sent you the message?”
Ethan looked up.
“Why would he do that anonymously?”
“Maybe because he didn’t want Derek to know.”
We sat in silence.
It was the kind of silence that invites every possibility into the room.
Finally, Ethan reached for his phone.
“Let’s ask him.”
Brian arrived fifteen minutes later.
He looked at the papers arranged across Ethan’s desk, and something in his expression changed.
“Where did you find those?”
“My attorney,” I said.
He glanced at Ethan.
Then back at me.
“Mrs.
Carter, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
Ethan’s voice was unusually gentle.
“Brian, sit down.”
Brian did.
For several seconds, he stared at his folded hands.
Then he looked directly at me.
“I knew your mother.”
The room seemed to go quiet around us.
“How?”
“I worked for her father.
Later, I helped manage the transportation company when she inherited it.”
I felt my throat tighten.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I made her a promise.”
“What promise?”
Brian reached into his jacket and removed a small envelope.
It was yellowed with age, its corners softened by time.
Across the front, in handwriting I would have recognized anywhere, were four words.
For my daughter, Jane.
I couldn’t move.
My mother’s handwriting.
Eight years after her death.
Brian placed the envelope on the desk between us.
“She asked me to give you this when you were old enough to make your own choices.”
I stared at him.
“Why now?”
His eyes filled with quiet sadness.
“Because I recently learned that someone has been trying to make those choices for you again.”
Ethan looked at the envelope.
Then at me.
“Jane, whatever is in there, you should read it first.”
My fingers trembled as I reached for the letter.
And when I unfolded the paper, the first sentence made me realize that everything I believed about my mother’s final wishes was about to change.
My darling Jane, if you’re reading this, someone has finally told you the truth about what I left behind.
The first time I realized my husband was keeping a secret from me, I thought it meant he had finally found a reason to care.
The second time, I began to wonder whether I had ever understood him at all.
It was a Wednesday afternoon in September when Brian told me Ethan had assigned additional security to my movements.
The Chicago sky was the color of wet pavement, and the first yellow leaves had begun collecting along the garden paths.
I stood outside the library, watching Brian adjust the cuffs of his immaculate suit.
“Did my husband explain why?”
“No, Mrs.
Carter.”
“Does he ever explain anything?”
For the first time in three months, Brian almost smiled.
“Not as often as he should.”
I studied him.
Brian was forty-one, with dark hair beginning to gray at the temples and the permanently attentive expression of a man who had spent his adult life anticipating other people’s decisions.
Since my wedding, he had been unfailingly polite, delivering Ethan’s instructions without comment.
But something about his manner had changed recently.
He had begun asking how I was sleeping.
He reminded the kitchen staff that I disliked mushrooms.
Once, when I returned from a charity luncheon with a headache, he arranged for someone to bring tea to my sitting room.
At first, I assumed he was simply doing his job.
Now I wasn’t so certain.
“Brian, am I in danger?”
His gaze shifted toward the windows.
“Your husband would prefer to take precautions.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he admitted.
“It isn’t.”
I looked down the corridor toward the west wing.
“Then I’ll ask him myself.”
Brian stepped aside.
“His study door is open.”
That surprised me more than anything else he could have said.
For three months, the west wing had been Ethan’s private territory, a place I entered only when summoned for some social obligation.
Even our conversations about household arrangements were usually conducted through Brian.
Now his door was open.
And I intended to find out why.
Ethan was standing behind his desk when I arrived, reading something on his laptop.
Late-afternoon sunlight fell across his dark hair and the sharp lines of his face.
His suit jacket hung over a chair, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his forearms.
He looked up when I knocked.
“Jane.”
There was the slightest hesitation before he closed his laptop.
“Is something wrong?”
“Apparently, you think there is.”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“Brian told you about the security.”
“He did.”
“Good.”
I folded my arms.
“Would you mind explaining why I suddenly need two people following me whenever I leave the house?”
“One driver and one security officer,” he corrected.
“That makes all the difference.”
Ethan leaned back against his desk.
I had learned that he disliked being questioned in front of his employees.
Alone, however, he was more difficult to read.
He rarely raised his voice.
Sometimes his silences felt like deliberate answers.
Today, he seemed unusually tired.
“There’s been some disagreement concerning the shipping contracts your father transferred after our wedding.”
“What kind of disagreement?”
“The Russo family believes certain agreements were made without consulting them.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“Probably nothing.”
“Probably?”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Jane, I don’t believe anyone intends to harm you.
But your name appears in some of the documents, and until I understand why, I’d rather you weren’t traveling alone.”
A cold sensation settled in my stomach.
“My name?”
“Yes.”
“Why would my name appear on your business documents?”
“That’s what I’m trying to establish.”
I stared at him.
For once, he didn’t seem to be withholding an answer merely because he considered me incapable of understanding it.
He genuinely didn’t know.
“Did my father put it there?”
His jaw tightened.
“Possibly.”
I thought of my father standing beside me on my wedding day, adjusting the lace at my shoulder and telling me everything would be better once I settled into married life.
I had believed that whatever else he might be, he would never knowingly place me in danger.
“Show me.”
Ethan hesitated.
“Jane—”
“If my name is on those documents, I deserve to see them.”
Something shifted in his expression.
He walked around his desk, opened a drawer, and removed a thin blue folder.
Inside was a photocopy of an agreement dated six weeks before our wedding.
Most of it concerned distribution rights and warehouse leases.
I understood enough about my father’s business to recognize several company names, although I had spent years deliberately avoiding any involvement.
Near the bottom of the third page, however, was a paragraph that made my pulse quicken.
Upon completion of the marriage between Ethan Carter and Jane Mitchell, certain beneficial interests shall transfer to the designated family trust.
“Jane Mitchell,” I whispered.
My maiden name looked strange on a page filled with financial terminology.
“What family trust?”
“That’s the problem,” Ethan said.
“I wasn’t aware of one.”
I turned the page.
There was my father’s signature.
And underneath it, a second signature that looked remarkably like mine.
Except I had never signed anything.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
Then I placed the folder carefully on Ethan’s desk.
“That’s not my signature.”
“I suspected it wasn’t.”
“You suspected?”
“Your father provided these documents to my attorneys before the wedding.
I didn’t examine every attachment personally.”
I let out a small, disbelieving laugh.
“Of course you didn’t.
You weren’t marrying me.
You were marrying a collection of shipping contracts.”
He looked away.
I immediately regretted how bitter I sounded.
Not because the words were untrue, but because I had promised myself I would never again beg this man to recognize what he had done to me.
“How long have you known?”
I asked.
“About the signature?
Since Monday.”
“And you weren’t going to tell me?”
“I was going to establish the facts first.”
“Without involving the person whose name someone used?”
Ethan’s face changed.
It was a small change, almost invisible.
But I recognized it.
He was ashamed.
“You’re right,” he said.
The simplicity of his answer took me by surprise.
He had never said those words to me before.
“I should have told you immediately.”
I sat down because my knees suddenly felt unreliable.
“Is this why you’ve been watching me?”
“I haven’t been watching you.”
“Brian knows where I go.
My driver tells you when I return.
You’ve suddenly become interested in whether I walk through my own garden.”
Ethan looked down at the folder.
“I received a message suggesting someone might approach you about the trust.
I wanted to know more before involving you.”
“Who sent it?”
“An anonymous source.”
“And what did it say?”
He opened his laptop and turned the screen toward me.
The message was brief.
Ask your wife what her father promised her.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
My father had promised me many things over the years.
He had promised I could attend university in Boston.
He had promised I could work after graduation.
He had promised that when my mother died, nothing important about our family would ever be hidden from me again.
He had broken every one of those promises.
But the last one hurt the most.
That evening, I called Lily.
She arrived forty minutes later carrying a paper bag from our favorite bakery and the determined expression she wore whenever she thought I was about to make a terrible decision.
“Before you say anything,” she announced, entering my sitting room, “I brought lemon cake.”
“You’re the only person in Chicago who understands me.”
“That’s because everyone else in your life thinks emotional communication is a sign of weakness.”
She placed the cake on the coffee table.
Then she looked at my face.
“What happened?”
I told her everything.
May you like
By the time I finished explaining the trust, the forged signature, and the mysterious message, Lily had abandoned her cake.
“Jane, you need a lawyer.”
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