Chapter 3: What Dani Knew
I sat in the car for a long time before I called her back.
The street outside Corinne's house was quiet.
A neighbor walked a dog past the front gate.
Normal afternoon.
Normal world.
Nothing about the last twenty minutes felt real.
I pressed call.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Ava." Her voice was careful.
Like she'd been rehearsing.
"Who are you?" I said.
"My name is Dani Marsh.
I was Weston's girlfriend for two years.
Before you."
The dog walker turned the corner and disappeared.
I watched the empty street.
"He told me you were a client," I said.
"Someone from his early investor days.
He mentioned a Dani once.
Said you'd had a falling out over a contract dispute."
"There was no contract dispute." A short pause.
"Ava, he was still seeing me when he started dating you.
For the first four months, we were both in his life at the same time.
I didn't know about you.
When I found out, I ended it."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Why are you calling me now?
That was two years ago."
"Because three weeks ago, a mutual friend told me you were pregnant and getting married in six weeks.
And because I still have the bank records."
"What bank records?"
"The transfers," she said.
"Weston borrowed forty thousand dollars from me over eighteen months.
He said it was for the startup.
Emergency runway.
He cried, Ava.
He actually cried in my kitchen telling me the company would fold without it." Her voice went flat.
"I checked the startup's accounts last year when he stopped returning my calls.
That money never went to the company."
The back of my neck went cold.
"Where did it go?"
"Some of it I can trace.
A lease payment on a car I never saw.
A hotel in Napa.
Dinners.
Jewelry." She stopped.
"I think some of it went to you.
To your relationship.
He was funding his life with my money while he was building something with yours."
I didn't speak.
"I'm not calling to hurt you," Dani said.
"I'm calling because you're about to marry him.
And you're pregnant.
And I wish someone had called me."
I looked at the front door of Corinne's house.
Still closed.
Still locked, probably, out of habit.
"Send me everything," I said.
"I already have it ready.
I've had it ready for a month.
I just didn't know if I should—"
"Send it."
She did.
While I was still sitting in the car, my phone buzzed with an email.
Fourteen attachments.
Bank statements with transfers highlighted in yellow.
Screenshots of messages.
A photo of a receipt from a jeweler dated eleven months ago — three months after Weston and I had moved in together.
The item on the receipt was a bracelet.
Rose gold.
Engraved.
I had never received a rose gold bracelet from Weston.
Not once.
I forwarded the email to my own work address, then to my personal backup.
Then I put the phone in my bag, started the car, and drove home.
He called four times before I reached the highway.
I let every call go to voicemail.
The fifth time, I picked up.
"Ava, listen to me—"
"I'm listening," I said.
"Go ahead."
Silence.
He hadn't expected that.
He'd expected the door to be locked from my side now.
He'd expected tears or shouting or nothing at all.
"What my mother did today was out of line," he said carefully.
"I know that.
I'm going to talk to her."
"You locked the door, Weston."
"I was trying to get everyone to calm down.
You were escalating—"
"I was leaving," I said.
"That's not escalation.
That's a pregnant woman trying to walk out of a room where someone had just shoved her into a wall."
Another silence.
"I need you to come home so we can talk about this properly."
"I am going home," I said.
"To my house.
That I own.
That you've been living in for eighteen months without paying a single bill."
"Ava—"
"Don't call me again tonight."
I ended the call.
The email from Dani was sitting in my inbox.
Fourteen attachments.
Two years of a life I hadn't known existed.
And somewhere in those records was the name of a woman who had received a rose gold bracelet with an engraving I hadn't read yet.
I wasn't ready to open that attachment.
Not while I was driving.
Not while my hands were still steady and I needed them to stay that way.
May you like
But I would open it.
And when I did, I already knew it wasn't going to say my name.
