"At 2:07 in the morning, a hospital called and told me my husband had arrived with another woman—and the doctors could not separate them without medical help. The woman was my brother-in-law’s wife, but the real shock wasn’t the affair. It was the terror on my husband’s face when I asked for the combination to his office safe.

The rain had returned by late afternoon, turning the streets of Manhattan into glistening black rivers.

I sat in the high-floor corner office of Vance & Sterling Enterprises—my grandfather’s former office, which Julian had occupied for the last three years. The heavy mahogany desk had been cleared of Julian’s personal items, replaced by my own leather binders and laptop.

Standing near the floor-to-ceiling glass window was Marcus.

His eyes were sunken, his tie loosened, holding a glass of amber scotch that he hadn't touched for thirty minutes. He looked ten years older than he had twenty-four hours ago at the hospital.

"She’s packing her things," Marcus said, his voice flat, staring out at the city skyline. "Clarissa. Her parents are taking her back to Ohio. She tried to tell me last night that Julian forced her... that he threatened to expose her family’s tax problems if she didn't sleep with him."

"Did you believe her?" I asked, turning a page in the audit report.

Marcus let out a dry, bitter laugh. "I checked her phone while she was sleeping this morning, Rebecca. She’s been messaging him for eighteen months. They were planning to move to London after the stock restructuring was finalized. She wasn't his victim. She was his accomplice."

I closed the audit file and looked at my brother-in-law. Marcus had always been the quiet, gentle member of the family—an architect who preferred designing buildings to managing corporate balance sheets. Julian had used Marcus’s trusting nature to sign off on architectural permits and property valuations that inflated Vance & Sterling’s assets.

"Marcus," I said gently. "The board is going to offer you a choice. You can resign from your position as Chief Design Officer with a full severance package, or you can cooperate with the forensic auditors to clear your name from the false valuation reports."

Marcus turned to face me, a sad, bittersweet smile on his face. "I don't want the severance, Rebecca. And I don't want to work here anymore. I knew something was wrong two years ago. I saw the inconsistencies in the project budgets. But I stayed quiet because I didn't want to cause trouble in the family. I didn't want to believe that my brother... or my wife... were capable of this."

"Silence is expensive, Marcus," I noted softly. "I paid a heavy price for mine."

"I know," Marcus said, stepping toward the desk and placing his house key on the leather blotter. "I gave the police full access to Clarissa’s personal computer this afternoon. I found the emails between her and Julian detailing the offshore transfers. It’s all there, Rebecca. Every transaction, every bribe, every wire."

I looked at the key on my desk, then up at Marcus. "Where will you go?"

"Upstate," Marcus replied. "My grandfather had a small cabin near Lake Placid. I’m going to build things again. Real things. Not corporate empires built on lies."

He walked toward the door, then paused, looking back at me. "Are you going to be okay, Rebecca? Running this place alone?"