Chapter 4 - The Girl in My Robe
Tiffany called me before noon.
Her voice shook.
“Jason knows I talked.”
“Where are you?”
She hesitated.
“In the apartment.”
The apartment Jason bought with company money.
I told Marcus to send security.
Tiffany refused.
“He watches the building.”
“Then leave.”
“He said if I walk out, the police will find drugs in my car.”
Jason had studied fear carefully. He knew how to turn a person’s secrets into walls.
I asked what she knew about the Laurent shares.
Silence.
“My father said the company belonged partly to him,” she whispered. “My mother told me he died because he challenged your family.”
“Why did you never contact me?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Three years ago. Malcolm Sloane answered.”
Malcolm told her Charles had stolen company funds and died before charges could be filed. He showed her documents carrying my father’s signature. Then he offered to help restore the Laurent name if she cooperated.
Her first task was to meet Jason at a charity auction.
“He thought it was an accident,” she said.
Malcolm taught her what Jason disliked about me. My long hours. My refusal to praise him in public. My control of company shares. Tiffany became the mirror that returned the version of himself Jason wanted to see.
She listened.
Admired.
Needed.
The affair began within two months.
“What did Malcolm promise you?”
“Eight percent of Carter Dynamics after the divorce.”
The same percentage inside the Continuity Annex.
Malcolm knew about the sealed document.
He told Tiffany that Jason would receive half my shares once he destroyed the prenup and proved I had concealed marital assets. Jason promised to transfer the Laurent portion to her after becoming controlling shareholder.
Both believed the agreement in my home office was real.
Neither knew the original remained in the vault.
“Did you know about the pool cover?”
“No.”
“The sedative?”
She began crying.
“Jason said the drops would make you less aggressive when he announced the divorce. I thought you would stumble. I thought people would believe you were drunk.”
“You held the glass.”
“I know.”
That made her part of it, whether she understood the ending or not.
Regret did not remove action.
It only determined what she did next.
“Who supplied the drops?”
“A waiter named Daniel.”
“The nervous man Emma pointed at?” No, not Emma. Need consistent. Actually no other child. Let's correct. There was a waiter backing away? Not in this story. User prompt no waiter. So avoid. Need fix. We'll say a waiter near bar. "The man who left after the cover stopped?" Let's continue.
“The waiter near the east bar,” she said. “Jason called him Owen.”
Marcus’s team searched the staffing records.
No employee named Owen had worked the party.
Tiffany sent me a photograph she had taken before guests arrived. The man stood beside Malcolm near the service entrance.
I recognized him as Nolan Price, a former Carter Dynamics chemist fired for falsifying safety data.
He now worked for a private intelligence company controlled by Malcolm’s family trust.
The conspiracy was moving away from marital betrayal and toward corporate theft.
I told Tiffany to stay on the phone and walk toward the apartment’s emergency stairs.
She opened the door.
Then she stopped breathing.
“What?”
“There is someone in the hallway.”
A knock sounded on her end.
Jason’s voice came through.
“Tiffany, open the door.”
She whispered, “He cannot be here. The police took his passport.”
A second knock.
Gentle.
Controlled.
“Tiffany, Malcolm knows you spoke to Ava.”
I told her to lock herself inside the bathroom.
She moved.
A crash interrupted the call.
The apartment door broke open.
Tiffany screamed.
Then the line disconnected.
Marcus reached the building seven minutes later.
Jason was gone.
The bathroom window stood open onto a narrow maintenance balcony.
Tiffany had disappeared.
Her phone remained on the tile floor.
There was blood near the sink.
Police searched the building while I reviewed the phone.
The livestream file had been deleted remotely, but Marcus’s technician recovered a copy from temporary storage.
The final forty seconds showed more than Jason throwing the phone aside.
Because the device landed facing the lounge chairs, it captured Malcolm stepping behind a column and speaking into an earpiece.
“Cover activates after forty five seconds. If she surfaces early, move to the board plan.”
A second voice answered through the phone’s speaker.
Male.
Older.
“Do not let Jason improvise again.”
Malcolm said, “He believes the company becomes his.”
The other man laughed.
“Jason believes whatever makes him feel powerful.”
I replayed the voice.
Something inside me recognized the rhythm.
Not the sound.
The pauses.
The way he shortened my husband’s name.
My father used to speak that way.
I told myself grief was creating patterns.
Then Tiffany’s phone displayed a newly restored photograph from a deleted folder.
She had taken it six months earlier at Malcolm’s private club.
A silver haired man sat with his back to the camera.
May you like
On his right hand was the Carter family signet ring recovered from my father’s plane crash.
Continue to the next part: Ava begins to suspect her father survived the crash and has been directing Malcolm from the shadows.
