Chapter 6 - THE MASTER KEYI had spent twenty years building Morgan Development.
I knew every company account.
Every trust.
Every signature required for a transfer larger than one million dollars.
The authorization in my hand looked perfect.
The signature looked like mine.
But I had never signed it.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
Claire’s gaze shifted toward Ryan.
He shook his head.
“Don’t look at me. She gave it to me.”
“You processed it?”
“I prepared it. The bank rejected it because the trust amendment wasn’t complete.”
That explained the documents Claire had placed in front of me three days earlier.
She had not been reorganizing our estate for the baby.
She had been trying to unlock five million dollars.
I folded the authorization and put it inside my jacket.
Claire stepped toward me.
“You can’t take that.”
“It has my forged signature.”
“It belongs to me.”
“No,” I said. “That is precisely the problem.”
Ryan moved toward the door.
I blocked him.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You are staying until the police arrive.”
His face hardened.
“This is a personal matter.”
“It became a criminal matter when someone forged my name.”
Claire touched my arm.
“Daniel, please.”
I looked down at her hand.
She slowly removed it.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“You can’t do this to me tonight.”
I looked at her belly.
Despite everything, my first instinct was still to protect the child.
That instinct did not require protecting Claire from the consequences of her choices.
“I’m calling a doctor,” I said. “You’ll be examined if you feel unwell. I’m also calling my lawyer and the police.”
Ryan swore under his breath.
Claire’s eyes narrowed.
“You would humiliate the mother of your child?”
“You told him the baby was his.”
“I was confused.”
“You forged my signature.”
“I didn’t.”
“You planned to take this house.”
Her voice rose.
“This house should be mine!”
The sentence echoed through the bedroom.
No tears now.
No fear.
Only fury.
I looked at the locked door.
At the mirror.
At the bed.
At the place where my marriage had ended before I even entered the room.
Then I remembered the master key in my pocket.
I had carried it since the house renovation.
Claire had locked me out of my bedroom.
But she had forgotten that I owned a key to every door.
I removed it and placed it on the dresser.
“I could have entered at any moment,” I said.
Claire stared at the key.
“I chose to listen.”
Ryan looked uneasy.
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know there is more.”
I opened the smart-home application.
The mirror’s buffer was still active.
But when I entered my password, a warning appeared.
May you like
REMOTE DELETION IN PROGRESS.
Someone in the room had just tried to erase the recording.
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