Chapter 4 - A Brother’s Promise
Nathan opened his studio door wearing a shirt still damp from the gym.
Arthur shoved the fertility-clinic authorization against his chest.
"Tell me you aren't the father."
Nathan looked down and laughed once, without humor.
"Which version of father do you want?"
"Don't play games."
"Then stop pretending you didn't benefit."
Arthur stepped into the studio and noticed that the walls were covered with sketches for a planned development called The Bennett Family Center.
The renderings displayed a children's wing named after Arthur and Brooke.
A donor plaque bore Victoria's name.
Another listed my company as founding sponsor.
I had never approved such a donation.
Nathan saw him looking.
"You were supposed to be the face of it.
We would handle the money."
"We?"
Nathan said nothing.
Arthur approached the desk and found a photo of Brooke beside a man whose face had been cropped away.
A distinctive silver watch remained visible on the man's wrist.
Nathan wore the same watch.
Arthur's voice broke.
"You slept with her."
"She came to me because you couldn't give her what she wanted."
The words echoed Arthur's own cruelty toward me, and for the first time he understood what it meant to hear that cruelty aimed back at him.
He lunged at Nathan.
The brothers stumbled into a table, scattering design models across the floor.
Nathan shoved him away and called security.
"Get out before you make this worse."
"You used me."
Nathan straightened his sleeve.
"You volunteered.
You wanted the fantasy more than the truth."
When Arthur left, he had blood on his knuckle and a recording running on his phone.
He called Mara and offered it to her.
She told him not to edit, circulate, or bargain with it.
"If you have evidence, preserve it and speak to your own attorney," she said.
Arthur asked to speak to me.
I declined.
I was in a different room, reading a deposition from a former accounts payable clerk named June Park.
June described purchase orders arriving pre-approved, never passing through our normal procedures.
She had questioned the invoices.
Arthur had told her she was disloyal.
Two weeks later, her job had been eliminated.
June had saved copies of the messages because she thought she might need them someday.
"I should have come sooner," she told me.
"You came now," I said.
Then she handed over a receipt for a courier envelope delivered to Nathan's studio.
The sender wasn't my company.
It was the fertility clinic.
The delivery date was the night after my second miscarriage.
Inside the envelope, according to the courier manifest, had been eight pages of records and a small temperature-controlled container.
Before I could ask another question, June turned pale at something outside the window.
A black SUV was parked across the street.
"That's the car," she whispered.
May you like
"The one that followed me home after I refused to sign the final invoice."
