A second message appeared. Do not trust Claire with the original.

I looked across the table. Claire was watching my face. “What happened?” she asked.

Before I could answer, a third message arrived. This one held an address — not the storage unit listed under Victor Hale’s name, but the house where my father had lived before he died.

The house had been empty for nearly six years. At the bottom were four words. Ethan is already inside.

I turned the phone facedown before Claire could see the screen. She studied me carefully. For the first time since I’d entered that conference room, I wondered whether Ethan had been the only person lying to me.

I’d thought the business trip revealed my wife’s betrayal. Then I believed it had uncovered Ethan’s financial scheme. Now a dead man’s handwriting, an old photograph, and a message from someone watching all of us suggested the story had begun years before Lauren ever answered my call.