Chapter 4 - The Wrong Envelope

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Adrian took a step backward. “I need to check the house.”

“Not until you explain.”

He rubbed his mouth. “Nathan was laundering money through our construction company. When I found out, he threatened us. I helped the authorities put him away.”

“You told me he died.”

“That's what I was told to say.”

“By whom?”

Adrian said nothing.

I laughed once, a sound so sharp it hurt. “Of course. Your whole life is a series of things I'm not allowed to know.”

“Celeste was Nathan's wife,” he said. “Before she was engaged to me. He used her to get close to me. When he resurfaced, she begged for help.”

“She was engaged to you before we met. You never said she was married.”

“Because I was ashamed I didn't see it.”

A nurse checked my blood pressure. Adrian stepped aside, but I could feel his eyes on the cream envelope in my bag.

“What did you put in there?” he asked.

“My letter. Why?”

“You took documents from my office.”

“Copies.”

He let out a slow breath. “Some of those transfers aren't what you think.”

“Then tell me what they are.”

He pulled a chair close, finally speaking like a man who had run out of exits. The transfers were ransom payments. Nathan had photographs of me coming home from prenatal appointments, dates of my scans, even a picture of the nursery. Adrian claimed he'd paid to keep the threats away.

I wanted to believe him. I also remembered the expensive bracelet he'd bought Celeste in October and the hotel receipt he'd explained as a business meeting.

“Were you sleeping with her?” I asked.

“No.”

I watched his face. “Not once?”

“No, Emma.”

“Then why did she call you ‘my love’?”

His silence answered the wrong question and opened a worse one.

“Because,” he said at last, “she has a recording of me saying something I can never take back.”

He reached for his phone. Before he could unlock it, the hospital's overhead speaker called a security alert near the maternity wing.

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Footsteps pounded past the door.

And from the hallway, a man's voice shouted my full name.