Chapter 3: What Sienna's Name Was Doing There
Grant turned the second page slowly, like a man who already suspected he wouldn't like what he found.
I watched him read.
I watched the moment it landed.
His jaw didn't tighten this time.
His face just went flat.
The way a face goes when the mind is working too fast for expression to keep up.
"This is a financial transfer record," he said.
"Yes."
"From my personal account." He looked up.
"To Sienna."
"Dated fourteen months before you filed for divorce," I said.
"Before you told me she was just a colleague.
Before you told the judge I was paranoid."
He set the page down on the bed.
He didn't let go of it.
"Grant, she wasn't helping you fall out of love with me.
She was being paid to make sure the divorce went a specific way."
"That's not—" He stopped.
"There are eleven transfers," I said.
"The amounts increased each time you needed something new from her.
The forwarded messages.
The appointments she passed along.
The document she photographed in my home office the week before your lawyers filed."
He looked at the page again.
His finger moved to the date.
"I didn't authorize this," he said quietly.
"Your signature is on three of them."
The room was very still.
My daughter made a small sound in her sleep.
Grant didn't look at her.
He was still staring at the paper.
"She told me you were unstable," he said.
"She showed me messages.
Things you supposedly said to her.
About me.
About the marriage."
"I know," I said.
"I've seen the messages.
They're in the folder too.
Page six."
He turned to page six.
He read for a long time.
"These aren't your words," he said.
"No."
"She fabricated them."
"Yes."
He put the folder down on the chair beside him and stood up.
He walked to the window.
The rain had slowed to a grey drizzle.
He stood with his back to me for almost a full minute.
"Why didn't your attorney use this during the divorce?" he finally said.
"Because I told her not to."
He turned around.
"Why?"
I looked at my daughter.
Her hand had curled into a tiny fist against her cheek.
"Because I needed Sienna to believe she had won," I said.
"If she thought she was safe, she wouldn't cover her tracks.
She'd keep going.
And she did."
"What do you mean she kept going?"
I reached over and turned to the last page of the folder.
A printed email chain.
Dates from three months ago.
"She's been in contact with your estate attorney," I said.
"Look at what she asked him to prepare."
Grant crossed the room in four steps.
He took the folder.
His face changed again.
This time it wasn't flatness.
It was something older.
Something that looked almost like grief.
"She was having him draft a new will," he said.
"Before the wedding," I said.
"Naming her as sole beneficiary of the Kingsley Family Trust.
Your parents' trust, Grant.
The one your father built for thirty years."
He sat down in the chair.
Not carefully.
He just dropped into it.
"She needed you married to her first," I said.
"The wedding today wasn't about love.
It was the last step."
The boutonniere on his lapel had started to wilt.
The white petals were curling at the edges.
"Where is she now?" he said.
"I don't know," I said.
"But your estate attorney called my attorney this morning.
He saw the email chain.
He's already contacted your family's legal office."
Grant looked at me across the hospital room.
His daughter was asleep between us.
The folder was open in his hands.
"You knew all of this," he said.
"You knew, and you waited."
"I needed her to finish," I said.
"An attempt is harder to prosecute than a completed act.
My attorney needed her to actually file the paperwork."
"Did she?"
I held his gaze.
"She filed it yesterday," I said.
"The morning before the wedding."
Grant set the folder down very carefully on the edge of the bed.
He looked at his daughter for the first time since he had walked through the door.
She had his dark hair.
Even at two hours old, it was obvious.
He didn't say anything.
He just looked at her.
Then his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
May you like
His face closed.
"It's Sienna," he said.
