Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Rain
Outside, rain blew beneath the hotel awning.
One of the guards offered me a clean towel.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
His name tag read MARTINEZ.
“Did you see her throw the wine?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then please write down exactly what you saw.”
He nodded.
Behind the glass doors, the gala continued.
Music resumed.
That hurt more than I expected.
The world had watched my marriage die and gone back to dessert.
Ruth’s car pulled up eight minutes later.
She stepped out wearing a gray coat over evening clothes.
For twenty years, she had been my father’s attorney.
For the last seven, she had been mine.
She looked at the dress, then my face.
“Hospital?”
“No.”
“Police?”
“Not tonight. I want the hotel footage preserved.”
“Already requested.”
Inside the car, she handed me a bottle of water.
I couldn’t get the cap off.
She opened it without commenting.
“Tell me what happened.”
I did.
All of it.
When I finished, Ruth looked out the window for a moment.
Then she asked, “Are you safe going home?”
The answer should have been easy.
Instead, I heard Everett’s voice.
Don’t embarrass yourself.
“No.”
“We’ll handle your belongings tomorrow.”
My phone lit up.
EVERETT.
Then again.
Then a message.
You need to stop calling business contacts. This is personal.
I showed Ruth.
She read it without expression.
“Interesting distinction.”
My father had started Northline Capital after selling his manufacturing company.
When he died, I inherited the controlling interest, along with a board seat and a responsibility I had never taken lightly.
Everett knew there had been an inheritance.
He believed it was modest.
I had let him believe that.
At first, I wanted a marriage untouched by the question of what my name could buy.
Later, the silence became easier than admitting how much of his success depended on me.
Northline’s investment in Hale Development had gone through a separate fund.
The documents named the fund and its authorized representatives.
Everett had never cared enough to ask who stood behind it.
“Can we withdraw the money?” I asked.
“Not with a phone call,” Ruth said. “And we won’t punish employees because your husband is cruel.”
“I know.”
“But we can stop approving new discretionary funding while we investigate.”
“Do it.”
Her phone vibrated.
She read the message twice.
“What?”
“Ben Ortiz has been trying to reach you.”
Everett’s chief financial officer.
“Why?”
“He says there’s a document you need to see before Monday.”
Ruth turned the screen toward me.
Attached was a personal guarantee bearing my name.
The signature looked almost right.
May you like
Almost.
I had never signed it.
