Chapter 4 - A Door Nico Couldn't Lock
The first thing I bought after leaving Nico was a toothbrush.
It cost four dollars and ninety-nine cents.
I stood in a pharmacy under fluorescent lights, clutching it like a declaration of independence. Maya's security guard waited near the door. Adrian had given me a cash envelope, but I used my own debit card.
The transaction declined.
I tried again.
Declined.
My bank's app showed ACCOUNT ACCESS TEMPORARILY RESTRICTED.
I hadn't even reached my new bed, and Nico had already found a way to follow me.
Maya answered on the second ring.
“Don't panic. We expected this.”
“I didn't.”
“That's why you hired me.”
“I haven't paid you.”
“We'll discuss my bill after we stop somebody from stealing your name.”
I used a few dollars from my purse and walked out with the toothbrush. The guard drove me to the temporary apartment, a modest place above an office that smelled faintly of coffee and fresh paint.
Nothing about it belonged to Nico.
I checked the locks twice.
At two in the morning, I checked them again.
By dawn, I understood how a person could be exhausted and unable to sleep at the same time.
Maya came at eight with bagels, a fresh legal pad, and a folder bearing my mother's full name.
“Eleanor Whitmore established a family trust when you were fourteen,” she said. “Your father had owned commercial property near the Hudson River. After his death, she put the shares into a protective structure.”
“I know about the trust.”
“You know the version Nico showed you.”
She set a document in front of me.
My thirtieth birthday was Saturday. Same day as my wedding.
The dinner Nico missed had been an early birthday celebration. He had promised we would celebrate the actual date together after the ceremony. I had convinced myself that made the empty chair less painful.
I knew that, too. Nico had called it romantic. A new decade and a new life together.
Maya tapped a paragraph.
“On your thirtieth birthday, you gain authority over the Whitmore Harbor Holdings voting shares. Until then, the trustee controls them. Someone has submitted a request to transfer those shares immediately after the release, based on what appears to be a directive from you.”
“How many shares?”
“Controlling interest.”
“Worth?”
She told me.
I said nothing for nearly a minute.
The money was staggering. But what frightened me wasn't the number. It was the way Nico had arranged a wedding around a birthday I'd always thought was mine.
“Could he do it without me?”
“He needs the trustee to believe you signed. He also needs to neutralize any objection from you. Your forged jewelry sale may have been practice.”
“And the guardianship claim?”
“A way to undermine your credibility if you object.”
I remembered the way Nico had corrected my taste in earrings. It felt small now, but it had been a rehearsal, too. He was practicing speaking in my place.
“Who is the trustee?”
“Daniel Mercer. Old family lawyer. I've requested an emergency meeting.”
A name surfaced in my mind. Mr. Mercer had sent me birthday cards when I was little. He always drew a tiny boat in the corner.
“He hasn't called me in years.”
Maya turned the page.
“Nico replaced your contact information in the trust's correspondence records last spring.”
Last spring. Two months after he proposed.
I pushed my chair away from the table.
“Everything was already happening.”
Maya didn't offer reassurance she couldn't prove.
“Yes,” she said. “It looks that way.”
Before I called the planner, Melissa finally called me back. The sound of her voice nearly broke me.
“Claire, are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“I've seen the pictures online.”
“What pictures?”
She sent me a link. A gossip account had posted a photograph of me leaving the jewelry store, my face pale, a uniformed officer at my side. The caption said my fiancé had rushed to help after a private medical emergency.
Hundreds of comments appeared below it. Some strangers wished me well. Others joked about rich women who couldn't handle disappointment. I kept scrolling until Melissa told me to stop.
“I know what he's doing,” she said. “I watched him do it at your engagement party.”
“What?”
“You told a story, and he interrupted to correct a detail. He wasn't even there when it happened. You laughed because everyone was watching.”
I remembered that night. The laugh. The way he'd squeezed my shoulder afterward and said I should thank him for saving me from embarrassment.
“I thought I was imagining it,” Melissa said. “I should have said more.”
“You tried.”
“Then I'm trying again. You have a room at my place if you need it. And I have a folder of messages you sent me last winter, before he started answering for you.”
I had forgotten those messages. They were proof that I knew how to make decisions before Nico convinced me otherwise.
“Keep them,” I said. “Maya may need them.”
After the call, I wrote Melissa's number on a piece of paper. I taped it beside the door, where I could see it whenever I checked the locks.
My phone was now on a prepaid number that Nico didn't know. I used it to call the wedding planner.
“Claire!” the woman said. “Your fiancé said you weren't feeling well.”
“Did someone come to your office yesterday wearing a blue coat?”
A pause.
“A woman picked up a dress bag. I assumed she was your assistant.”
“Did she ask about me?”
“She asked what time your appointment ended. Said she was coordinating a surprise.”
I stared at the wall.
“Please save your security recordings,” I said. “My attorney will contact you.”
After the call, I opened my email. Dozens of messages from Nico sat unread. Some said he loved me. Some accused me of embarrassing him. The last was a photograph of our engagement portrait with the words DON'T THROW US AWAY.
I had to put the phone down.
I had loved the man in that picture. I couldn't make that part untrue just because the rest had turned ugly.
Adrian knocked at noon. He brought two cups of coffee and stayed in the doorway until I invited him inside.
“Black, one sugar,” he said.
I stared at the cup.
“How did you know?”
“Your father ordered it that way at my father's store. Julian thought you might, too.”
“I take mine with milk.”
He looked horrified.
I laughed.
It surprised both of us.
“I'll get it right next time,” he said.
“There doesn't have to be a next time.”
“I know.”
He set the cup on the counter and made no attempt to change my mind.
That did more for me than flowers ever had.
I asked him about his sister.
He sat opposite me, hands loosely folded.
“Her name was Rebecca. She was a forensic accountant. She found irregular payments linked to Bellandi shipping companies. Three weeks after she spoke to a reporter, her car went into the river.”
“Was it an accident?”
“The official report said so.”
“And you don't believe it.”
“No.”
“Why did you keep that from me at the store?”
“Because you had just discovered a woman wearing your face. I didn't want to make your crisis about my grief.”
I considered that. It wasn't a perfect answer. It was at least an answer.
“Did Rebecca know my family?”
“Only through the Whitmore company records.”
He slid a photograph across the table. His sister had short dark curls and a gap between her front teeth. She grinned at the camera, her arm around Adrian's shoulders.
“That's the person I'm trying to get justice for,” he said. “Not an excuse to put you in the middle of something.”
I handed the photograph back.
“You're already in the middle.”
“Yes.”
“Then don't decide what I can handle.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
That afternoon, the court refused Nico's emergency request. Maya sent the forged consignment video and the police incident number to the judge. The request was denied without any finding that Nico's claims were true.
For six full minutes, I felt like I could breathe.
Then Daniel Mercer called.
He sounded older than I remembered.
“I've received your attorney's notice, Claire. I need to ask one question. Did you authorize a transfer of your mother's voting rights?”
“No.”
A long silence.
“Then there's something you need to see. The application includes a document your mother supposedly signed before she died.”
“My mother died when I was twenty-one.”
“I know.”
“What document?”
“A statement naming Nico Bellandi as the man she trusted to protect you.”
I felt my stomach turn.
“My mother never met Nico.”
“I know that, too,” Mercer whispered.
“Then how could she have signed it?”
May you like
His next words came slowly.
“Because the signature is dated three months after her funeral.”
