“How long have you known about Natalie?”
Silence.
I felt my heart harden.
“How long, Lucas?”
“About a year.”
A year.
I stared out the hotel window at cars moving through dirty snow.
“And you let me pay thirty-five thousand dollars toward your wedding.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
“You offered.”
“I thought I was family.”
“You are family.”
I laughed.
“No. I was financing one.”
He became defensive.
“You don’t understand Brandon’s side.”
“He slapped my mother.”
“She was snooping.”
“He planted the cash.”
Silence.
Lucas hadn’t known that.
I heard it in the gap.
Then he whispered, “What?”
“You didn’t know that part?”
No answer.
“How much did he tell you?”
Lucas hung up.
The next week cracked Brandon’s family apart.
Lucas hired his own attorney.
His wife learned their home address had been used to register Northstar without her understanding what it was for.
Liam admitted Brandon had asked him to hold $18,000 temporarily but Liam refused.
Tyler confessed Brandon had talked openly months earlier about “getting ahead of a divorce.”
Their mother, Elaine, called me.
I expected blame.
Instead she cried.
“I raised him.”
I said nothing.
“I keep wondering where I missed it.”
“Elaine…”
“He told me you were unstable. That you were spending money. That Margaret was interfering.”
My stomach twisted.
“How long?”
“Since Thanksgiving.”
Before Mom even moved in permanently.
He had been constructing the story in advance.
The difficult wife.
The intrusive mother.
The disappearing money.
The failing marriage.
Nothing had happened spontaneously.
Brandon had been preparing witnesses before he prepared his exit.
Three weeks after I left, Claire called me into her office.
David was there.
So was a detective named Ramirez.
Ramirez placed a clear evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a black USB drive.
“We executed a warrant connected to the financial investigation.”
“Where did you find that?”
“Your apartment.”
My old apartment.
Brandon had stayed there after I left.
Then the landlord terminated the lease after his arrest for violating the temporary restraining order by trying to access one of the frozen business accounts through Lucas.
“What’s on it?”
Ramirez glanced at David.
“Financial files. Scanned documents. Some recordings.”
