Chapter 6 - The Photograph
I wanted to hate Dominic cleanly.
That would have been easier.
Instead, he slid his phone across the table and showed me the first photograph Cassandra had sent him five months earlier.
It was me leaving my obstetrician’s office.
The second showed my car outside our house.
The third showed my younger brother, Ethan, walking into his college apartment in Boston.
Under the third image was a message.
DO WHAT I ASK, OR THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE BECOME LEVERAGE.
I looked up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the threat was tied to a leak inside my company. I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“So you kissed her?”
His face tightened. “She arranged a camera. She wanted proof she could use against me. I let her get it because Peter believed she was working for whoever was stealing from the company.”
“You let another woman kiss you while I was pregnant.”
“I know.”
“No, you know the sentence. You don’t know what it did to me.”
He looked down.
That was almost worse than an excuse.
Rebecca broke the silence. “Where is the video?”
“Cassandra has it.”
“Then why stage a hotel room?”
Dominic looked at her. “To make Ava leave me before the board vote.”
“What board vote?” I asked.
He closed his eyes briefly.
“The family trust vote next week.”
I laughed once. “Of course there’s another secret.”
Dominic explained that my late father-in-law had placed thirty-one percent of Moretti Holdings into a marital trust. If Dominic and I remained married, I controlled the deciding proxy during any emergency leadership vote. If we legally separated, my proxy reverted temporarily to the senior board.
“And who controls the senior board?” Rebecca asked.
“Victor Moretti,” Dominic said.
His uncle.
The man who had toasted our marriage as “the strongest alliance this family ever made.”
My phone buzzed.
A photo appeared from an unknown number.
It showed Rebecca’s townhouse.
Taken from across the street.
May you like
Under it were six words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED AT THE HOTEL.
