Chapter 8: The Emails
Ethan was already awake when Grace came downstairs.
He was at the kitchen island with his laptop open and a coffee going cold beside him.
He looked up when she came in.
He read her face.
"Patricia called you," he said.
"This morning.
Seven o'clock." She stood across the island from him.
"The emails, Ethan."
"I was going to tell you."
"When?"
He closed the laptop.
"I found them last night.
Lauren's attorney sent a copy to mine as a — she called it a courtesy notice.
Meaning a warning." He looked at his hands.
"They're emails between me and Lauren from six weeks ago.
About the Southgate offer structure."
"What do they say?"
"They're written in a way that makes it look like I knew the Hendersons were being undercut." He looked up.
"I didn't know.
I was asking her to confirm their position and she was confirming it.
But the way she worded her replies — and the way I worded my questions — out of context, it reads like I was aware and proceeding anyway."
Grace looked at him steadily.
"Is that the truth?"
"Yes."
"All of it?"
"All of it." He held her gaze.
"Grace, I have made terrible choices in the last eighteen months.
I know that.
But I did not knowingly defraud the Hendersons.
I was being used the same way Gerald was used.
I just had the additional humiliation of also being romantically involved with the person using me."
Grace pulled out the stool across from him and sat down.
"Show me the emails," she said.
He opened the laptop and turned it toward her.
She read through them slowly.
All eleven.
She read each one twice.
He was right.
In isolation, certain phrases looked deliberate.
*We can hold at this number, she's flexible.* *The family won't push back if we move quickly.* But reading the full thread — seeing how Lauren had framed each response, how she had fed Ethan exactly the language that would make him sound complicit — it was clear.
She had been building a paper trail around him for weeks.
Not just to use him.
To protect herself by implicating him.
Grace closed the laptop.
"She planned this from the beginning," she said.
"Yes."
"She wasn't just running a scheme on the Hendersons.
She was making sure that if it unraveled, you'd be holding the bag."
"Yes."
Grace was quiet for a moment.
"Your attorney needs to see the full context.
Not just these emails.
The timeline.
Every communication with Lauren from the beginning.
Every meeting, every call log, everything."
"I've already sent him everything I have."
"Patricia needs it too." She stood up.
"I'm going to her office this morning.
I want to bring her the full thread, not just what Lauren's attorney selected."
"Grace." He reached across the island.
He didn't touch her hand.
He just placed his near it.
"I'm sorry.
For all of it.
Not as a strategy.
Not because I need something from you.
I'm sorry because I looked at what I had — what you gave me, what you built with me — and I treated it like it was ordinary." His voice was rough.
"It wasn't ordinary.
You were never ordinary."
She looked at his hand near hers.
She didn't move her hand away.
"I know," she said quietly.
She picked up her keys.
"I'll call you after Patricia's," she said.
---
At Patricia's office, Grace laid out the full email thread.
Patricia read it with her reading glasses on, turning pages slowly, making small marks in the margins.
When she finished, she took her glasses off.
"She's clever," Patricia said.
"She built this over weeks.
Every email she sent him was designed to sound like a confirmation while actually being a setup."
"Can we prove that?"
"We can show the pattern.
We have the Raleigh documents, the Nashville records, the name change, the father's conviction.
A jury — or even a commission — looking at the full picture of who Lauren Pierce actually is will read these emails very differently than she wants them to." Patricia tapped the stack.
"Her attorney is gambling that Ethan will panic and settle quietly to avoid exposure.
She's counting on him not wanting this to become public."
"He's not going to settle," Grace said.
Patricia looked at her over the desk.
"You've spoken to him?"
"Not yet.
But I know him." She paused.
"The man I married would not settle.
I'm trying to find out if that man is still in there."
"And if he is?"
"Then we fight it," Grace said.
"All of it.
Together."
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
Then she nodded.
"All right," she said.
"Then let's build the response."
Grace leaned forward and they got to work.
Outside the office window, Charlotte moved through an ordinary Tuesday.
People walked to meetings and bought coffee and checked their phones.
Inside, Grace Walker sat at a table covered in documents and began, carefully and deliberately, to dismantle everything Lauren Pierce had spent eighteen months constructing.
She did not feel powerful.
May you like
She felt precise.
That was better.
