Chapter 3 - FIVE MINUTES

Matthew was arrested at the private residence in Southampton shortly after two-thirty in the morning.

The property belonged to a holding company named Blue Harbor Estates.

Lauren Thorne was listed as the company’s sole manager.

NexusCore had paid the property taxes.

NexusCore had paid for the renovation.

NexusCore had even paid the salary of the full-time housekeeper.

Detective Chen gave us only the basic facts.

Matthew had been drinking when police arrived.

Lauren had answered the door wearing a white robe.

Matthew had initially claimed he had spent the entire evening at the house.

Then officers showed him security footage of his car entering our Manhattan garage at 10:54 p.m.

He changed his story.

He said we had argued.

He claimed I had attacked him.

He said the cane had fallen while he defended himself.

Detective Chen’s expression remained neutral as she repeated the statement.

My father’s did not.

“Did he have injuries?” I asked.

“A small cut on his thumb.”

I remembered the crystal vase.

He must have cut himself while stepping around the glass.

The officers found a packed suitcase in the master bedroom.

Inside were three passports.

Matthew’s.

Lauren’s.

And a child’s.

The child was named Milo Thorne.

He was eighteen months old.

The blue sock beneath Matthew’s passenger seat finally had an owner.

My mother sat beside my bed as Detective Chen spoke.

Her hand rested over mine.

She had cried when she entered the room.

Now her face was pale and controlled.

“Was the child in the house?” she asked.

“No.”

“He was with a nanny in another property.”

“Is he Matthew’s son?”

Detective Chen hesitated.

“We do not know.”

The possibility should have broken something inside me.

Instead, I felt strangely empty.

Matthew had already destroyed the marriage.

Learning that he might have built another family inside its ruins did not change what remained.

Detective Chen turned toward me.

“There is something else.”

Matthew’s phone had automatically connected to the Bluetooth system inside the Hamptons house when he arrived.

The system stored recent call information.

At 11:12 p.m., five minutes before the first strike, Matthew had called Lauren.

The call lasted thirty-four minutes.

He had not simply returned home after being embarrassed in front of his mistress.

He had kept Lauren on the phone.

She had heard everything.

Twenty strikes.

My pleas.

His counting.

His final command for me to clean myself up.

The title of my humiliation had been literal.

He had hurt me while she listened.

My mother stood so quickly that the chair struck the wall.

“She listened?”

Detective Chen nodded.

“We have not recovered the audio.”

“Then how do you know what she heard?”

“Lauren told the officers the call remained connected.”

My father looked sharply at the detective.

“She admitted that?”

“She admitted hearing an argument.”

“An argument.”

His voice carried enough contempt to fill the room.

“She described twenty blows as an argument?”

Detective Chen closed her notebook.

“Her attorney ended the interview.”

After she left, silence settled around us.

My mother brushed hair from my forehead.

“I should have come for you.”

“You did not know.”

“I knew you stopped calling.”

“That was my choice.”

My father turned toward the window.

The city beyond the glass was beginning to lighten.

A gray line appeared between the buildings.

Dawn.

The deadline from the opening of my nightmare had arrived.

My father’s phone vibrated.

He read the message.

“NexusCore’s bank has suspended all executive transfers.”

Another message arrived.

“The board has restricted Matthew’s authority pending an emergency vote.”

A third followed.

“Two major investors are demanding an independent audit.”

He looked at me.

“By sunrise, he no longer controls the money.”

My voice was barely a whisper.

“He will blame me.”

“He already does.”

“I helped create that company.”

“I know.”

“No.”

I forced myself upright despite the pain.

“You know I made calls.”

“You do not know everything.”

My father waited.

I thought about the cracked kitchen floor in Queens.

The handwritten architecture diagrams.

The client acquisition model I designed before Matthew had even chosen the company’s name.

The folders I stored in an old cloud account because Matthew once mocked me for keeping too many drafts.

“I still have the original NexusCore files.”

My father slowly turned toward me.

“How original?”

“Before incorporation.”

“Do they show dates?”

“Yes.”

“Authorship?”

“Yes.”

“Did Matthew sign anything acknowledging your work?”

I remembered a document from the night before our first investor meeting.

Matthew had been afraid I would leave if the presentation failed.

He had written a promise.

Fifty percent of everything.

Equal founders.

Equal ownership.

He signed it on the back of a Queens diner receipt because we could not afford a lawyer.

I had kept it for sentimental reasons.

Now it might be evidence.

“I think I have something better.”

My father’s eyes changed.

For the first time since entering the penthouse, I saw more than anger.

I saw strategy.

“Where is it?”

“In a storage box.”

“Where?”

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I looked toward my mother.

“The house in Greenwich.”