Chapter 13 - RACHEL'S SECRET
I confronted Rachel in the safest place Detective Shah could arrange: a federal interview room.
She did not deny the payment.
“My firm represented one of Charles’s shell companies before I joined,” she said.
“The ledger says last year.”
“I discovered it last year during an internal audit.”
“And didn’t tell me?”
“I was trying to trace it without tipping him off.”
“Everyone keeps deciding what I’m allowed to know.”
Rachel looked ashamed. “You’re right.”
Detective Shah placed a resignation form on the table. “If Emma wants new counsel, this ends now.”
Rachel pushed it toward me herself.
I didn’t sign.
“Prove it.”
She exhaled. “Charles paid my old firm to prepare a legal opinion saying your trust could be restructured without your consent if you were declared incapacitated.”
My skin crawled.
“On what basis?”
“Psychiatric instability.”
Nathan’s behavior suddenly made sense in a new way.
The public arguments. The claims that I was paranoid. The affair almost flaunted in front of me.
“They wanted me to explode.”
Rachel nodded.
“And the jewelry store?”
“If you had struck Nathan back, they would have used it.”
I almost laughed.
Instead, I remembered standing from the floor while blood ran from my lip.
They had needed me to become the story they had already written.
But I hadn’t.
Rachel produced emails proving she had been feeding information to federal investigators for six months.
Detective Shah confirmed it.
I finally signed nothing.
Rachel stayed my lawyer.
Then an agent entered with urgent news.
Charles Whitmore had disappeared.
His office was empty.
His home had been cleared.
May you like
And at 4:17 p.m., someone using my biometric authorization had attempted to move the family shares offshore.
Friday was less than seventeen hours away.
