Chapter 9: What Marcus Vane Found
Marcus Vane was thorough.
Over the following ten days, Claire's former colleagues received polite calls from a man asking general questions about her professional history.
Her landlord was contacted about a lease dispute that had been resolved eight years ago and had never been a dispute at all.
A photograph appeared on a private Facebook group — Claire at a work event in 2019, slightly blurred, captioned with a false name and a suggestion she had been dismissed from the role.
The photograph was reported and removed within six hours.
The landlord called Claire directly to tell her about the inquiry and to say he had nothing negative to offer.
Her former colleagues called David.
Vane was building a file.
The file had nothing in it.
On the eleventh day, he made a mistake.
He contacted the retired HR director a second time.
This time he identified himself by name and asked whether she had been *coached* on the content of her statement by Mrs.
Johnson's attorney.
She recorded the call.
She sent the recording to David before Vane had finished driving away from her street.
David filed it the same afternoon.
Two days later, Vane's operating license was flagged for review by the relevant professional body following a formal complaint submitted by David's office.
The complaint cited the fabricated Facebook post, the false landlord inquiry, and the recorded call to a named witness in an active legal proceeding.
Diane called Cassandra that evening.
Cassandra answered this time.
"You need to stop," Cassandra said.
She didn't say hello.
"I'm protecting myself." Diane's voice was tight.
"That's all I've ever done.
Everything I did — all of it — was to protect this family."
"You protected yourself.
There's a difference."
"You don't understand what it was like.
Your father's firm was struggling.
My sister-in-law needed that position.
If she didn't get it, we were going to lose—"
"Don't." Cassandra's voice was quiet and absolute.
"Don't tell me about money.
A woman lost her baby.
She lost her partner.
She lost twenty years of her career.
Don't tell me that was about protecting the family."
Silence.
"You were four years old," Diane said.
"You don't know what I was carrying."
"You're right.
I was four.
But I'm not four now." Cassandra sat down on the edge of her bed.
"Mum.
It's over.
Whatever you thought Marcus Vane was going to find — there's nothing there.
Claire is not the person you told everyone she was.
She never was." A pause.
"Call it off.
Stop the investigator.
Stop the calls.
Talk to a lawyer — a real one, not someone you're using to run interference — and figure out how to make this right."
"Make it right." Diane's voice cracked slightly.
"How do I make a miscarriage right?"
"I don't know," Cassandra said.
"But you start by stopping."
The line was quiet for a long time.
"I'll think about it," Diane said.
"That's not enough."
Another silence.
"I'll call Vane in the morning," Diane said finally.
"I'll tell him to stop."
"Tonight," Cassandra said.
"Call him tonight."
The line went dead.
Cassandra sat in her room for a while.
Then she texted Claire.
*She's calling him off tonight.
I think she means it this time.
I'm sorry this took so long.*
Claire's reply came back in under a minute.
*Thank you.
Get some sleep.*
Cassandra set her phone down and looked at the ceiling.
She thought about a woman she had never met, sitting in an apartment somewhere across the city, holding twenty-three years of a life that had been quietly taken apart by someone who had never once considered the cost.
She thought about a folder on a hard drive labeled with a stranger's name.
May you like
She thought about the line: *Matter concluded.*
She did not sleep well.
