Chapter 6 - A Signature She Never Wrote
Serena bent over the page.
“That isn’t mine.”
Dante studied the signature.
It looked like the handwriting on her birthday cards.
The neat capitals.
The narrow loop in the final letter.
Arthur slid a second document beside it.
Then a third.
Serena stepped back.
“I didn’t sign any of these.”
Patricia wouldn’t look at her.
“Mom.”
Her mother pressed a hand against her mouth.
“Look at me.”
Patricia lifted her eyes.
Serena spoke carefully.
“Did you watch him do this?”
“Your father said they were temporary.”
“Did you watch him?”
“Yes.”
The word seemed to empty the room.
Dante moved toward Serena, then stopped before touching her.
“What do you need?”
She looked at him as if the question itself hurt.
“A minute.”
He gave it to her.
Arthur explained that the files were copies.
Originals and payment records would be needed.
A handwriting opinion alone would not explain where the money had gone or who had directed it.
Dante listened.
Serena barely heard him.
She remembered sitting beside her father at seventeen, signing thank-you notes after a charity dinner.
He had corrected her handwriting.
Make it cleaner.
People notice these things.
She wondered how long he had been noticing.
Patricia reached for her.
“Sweetheart—”
Serena moved away.
“No.”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You brought me into a building full of men waiting to kill my husband.”
“I came to get you out.”
“And leave him upstairs?”
Patricia had no answer.
Dante’s phone flashed with another dock update.
The fire was contained.
Two warehouses were lost.
He turned the screen facedown.
Serena noticed.
“You can answer.”
“They’re safe.
This can wait.”
She drew a shaky breath.
Then she looked at Arthur.
“Where are the originals?”
“Some may be at the partnership office.”
“My father won’t leave them there.”
Patricia stared at her hands.
“No,” she said.
“He keeps a separate set.”
Dante waited.
“In his house.
A gray document case in the locked cabinet behind his office desk.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I carried it upstairs yesterday.”
Serena’s expression changed.
“Yesterday?”
Patricia nodded.
“What else was in it?”
“Passports.
Cash.
A flight reservation.”
“Where?”
“Outside the country.”
For the first time all night, Dante saw anger replace the exhaustion in his wife’s face.
“He isn’t taking us home,” Serena said.
Arthur’s phone buzzed.
An email from the partnership office had arrived.
May you like
Attached was a letter dated that afternoon.
It accused Serena of authorizing every missing transfer.
