Chapter 2 - Following the Paper Trail
By mid-afternoon the next day, Greenwich Hospital felt less like a medical facility and more like a fortress guarded by lawyers. Two firm-jawed men in navy suits stood outside Julian’s private suite on the cardiac floor, barring anyone without Eleanor’s explicit written approval. Eleanor herself was resting in a VIP room down the hall, undergoing monitoring for a spike in blood pressure, but her legal team was already operational.
I sat in the hospital cafeteria, a lukewarm plastic cup of coffee sitting untouched between my hands. Across from me, Ethan pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't slept in thirty-six hours.
"The lawyers tried to lock me out of the company servers this morning," Ethan said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Julian's personal assistant called my field office at dawn to tell me my access to the Vance Engineering database had been revoked per 'board orders'."
"Eleanor's orders," I corrected. "She's trying to seal the perimeter before anyone asks why Julian collapsed in your wife's bedroom."
"It's not just about the affair, Clara," Ethan said, leaning forward. He pulled a thick folder from his canvas bag and slid it across the laminate table toward me. "Look at these material inspection logs from the Hudson Span project. I was chief engineer on site, but these aren't the reports I signed."
I opened the folder. Pages of structural density tests and steel stress analyses were stamped with official state seals, but the signature at the bottom of each page made me freeze.
"That's Julian's handwriting," I murmured. "He forged your name?"
"He didn't just forge my name. He replaced high-grade structural steel with cheaper, non-certified alloys imported through a shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands," Ethan explained, his eyes burning with quiet rage. "Sienna's father used to manage logistics for that shell company before he passed away. She found the ledger in her father's old files."
"So Julian didn't seduce Sienna," I said, the horrific picture finally coming into focus. "He bought her silence. He gave her luxury gifts to make her look like a greedy mistress, so if she ever came forward, Eleanor could ruin her credibility by claiming she was a bitter, gold-digging blackmailer."
"And if those bridges fail, Clara, hundreds of people die," Ethan said grimly. "Julian risked thousands of lives just to pad the Vance Enterprises bottom line by thirty million dollars."
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My mind raced back to the blue pill, to the reckless act of revenge I had committed in our kitchen hours before. I had wanted to humiliate Julian, to make him feel a fraction of the rejection and inadequacy he had forced upon me for six months. I hadn't realized I was throwing a match into a room already filled with dynamite.
"We need those physical ledgers," I said, looking straight into Ethan’s eyes. "The real ones. Before Eleanor’s attorneys burn them."
