He Planned To Steal My Fortune And Lock Me In A Psych Ward

The elevator hummed louder.

I flipped the black folder open and started shooting. Page one. Page two. The chart with all the arrows. My thumb tapped the screen so fast the shutter sound blurred into one long stutter.

*Wren Holdings. Trust Timeline. Morton—Exit Package.*

Twenty pages. Thirty.

The whir in the walls changed pitch. Slower now. Close.

I opened my cloud app and hit upload. A little blue bar crawled across the screen.

"Come on," I hissed. "Come on, come on."

Forty-one percent.

I slid the folder back into the bottom drawer, tab facing out, exactly how I found it. The broken lock wouldn't catch. I shoved the drawer hard with my knee. Something inside clicked. Close enough.

Letter opener back in the pen cup. Point down, like he kept it.

Seventy-eight percent.

I locked the study door behind me and pressed the spare key back under the closet shelf. The tape had lost its stick. I held it there with one finger and counted to five.

The elevator chimed.

Upload complete.

I ran.

---

By the time the front door opened, I was in our bed with the comforter pulled to my chin. My coat hung over the chair. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I was sure he'd hear it through the wall.

Footsteps in the hall. They paused outside the study.

A key. A lock turning.

I stared at the ceiling and did not move.

Thirty seconds. A minute. A drawer scraped open.

*Please. Please don't look closely.*

The drawer shut. The footsteps came toward the bedroom.

The door swung open, and light from the hall spilled across the floor.

"Jesus—" Kael jumped back a full step. "El?"

I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes. "Surprise."

"What are you—you're supposed to be in Zurich."

"I know." I gave him a sleepy smile. "I wanted to be home for our anniversary. I took the early flight. I was going to wait up, but I passed out."

He stood in the doorway for a long moment. His tie hung loose. His collar was wrinkled on one side.

Then his face melted into something soft.

"You crazy woman." He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "You flew all that way just to sleep?"

"Just to see you."

He cupped my face in both hands. His palms smelled like vanilla lotion. Laney's. The bottle on her desk.

I held still while he kissed my forehead.

"God, what a night," he groaned, flopping back across the foot of the bed. "Three hours of Harlan's people arguing over decimal points. I thought my head was going to split open."

"My poor husband."

"Don't." He laughed and covered his eyes with his arm. "If you're nice to me, I'll cry."

I laughed too. A real one. It came out of nowhere, bright and loud, and for a second it scared me more than he did.

He lifted his arm and peeked at me. "What's so funny?"

"You," I said. "You always look so dramatic when you're tired."

"I'm a tragic figure." He sat up and squeezed my knee. "Did you take anything to sleep? You look pale."

"No pills tonight."

"You should, babe. Jet lag messes with you. You remember last time."

I didn't remember a last time. There had never been one.

"Maybe tomorrow," I said.

He kissed me on the mouth this time. I kissed him back. I made myself sink into it, the way I used to.

When he pulled away, he smiled at me like I was the only woman alive.

"Happy anniversary, El."

"Happy anniversary."

He went to shower. I lay awake listening to the water run, and I did not close my eyes once.

---

The next morning I told him I had a dress fitting and lunch with an old school friend.

"Look at you," he said, buttering his toast. "Back for one day and already busy."

"A girl has errands."

"Take the driver."

"I'll drive myself."

He paused with the knife in the air. Just for a blink. Then he shrugged. "Text me when you get there."

I didn't.

---

Elias picked a diner on the far side of the river, the kind with sticky menus and no one from our world. My cousin was already in a back booth when I arrived, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

"You look like hell," he said.

"Thank you. I worked hard on it."

"Sit. Talk."

I slid my phone across the table with one earbud. "Listen first."

He frowned and put it in.

I watched his face while the recording played. Elias was a corporate litigator. He'd sat through hostile depositions without blinking. Now his ears went red. Then his neck. At the part about Dr. Pell, his hand closed so hard around his coffee mug I thought it would crack.

He ripped the earbud out.

"That son of a bitch."

"There's more." I opened the photos and turned the screen toward him.

He swiped through them fast. Then slower. Then he stopped on the chart and stared.

"Wren Holdings," he muttered. "He set up a shell. In your name first, so it looks like your idea. Then it flips to him." He looked up. "El, this is fraud. This is conspiracy. We call the police today. Right now."

"No."

"*No?*"

"Keep your voice down."

He leaned across the table. "He's planning to have you declared unstable. He's paying a doctor to lie in your medical file. And you want to sit on this?"

"I want to finish it." I kept my voice flat. "Elias, look at page twelve again."

He swiped back.

"Those consulting fees," I said. "Those aren't for the future. They're already being paid. He's been moving money for months. Through people I've never heard of."

His jaw worked. "Gray money."

"If I go to the police today, what happens tonight?"

He didn't answer.

"He makes six phone calls," I said. "Accounts close. Files get shredded. Dr. Pell suddenly has no records. And all I'm left with is a recording of my husband being a pig in bed. That's a divorce. That's not a prison sentence."

Elias sat back hard against the booth. For a long moment he just looked at me.

"When did you get like this?" he said quietly.

"About seven o'clock last night."

He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Okay. Okay. So what do you want?"

"Everything. The bank trail. The trustee deal. Whatever he's paying Pell. I want the whole chain before he knows I'm holding it."

"That means you go home and keep sleeping next to him."

"Yes."

"Kissing him. Smiling at him."

"I did it last night."

He rubbed his face with both hands. "I hate this."

"You don't have to like it. You just have to help."

"I'll pull the corporate filings on Wren. Quietly." He tapped the table. "And Morton—I'll find out if anyone's approached him. But El, one thing first."

"What?"

"If Kael's paranoid enough to lock his drawers, he's paranoid enough to watch the house." Elias pulled out his phone. "I know a guy. Former security. He sweeps offices for my clients."

"The penthouse?"

"Every room. Today. While Kael's at work."

---

His guy was named Ruben Okafor. Big hands, quiet voice, a black case full of wands and blinking boxes. I let him in through the service lift at two o'clock.

"Bedroom first," I said.

He shook his head. "Places where people talk business first. You said there's a study?"

I unlocked it with the spare key.

He walked the room slowly, holding a gray device out in front of him. It clicked softly near the desk. Louder near the bookshelf. Then, in the far corner by the window, it let out a sharp, steady whine.

Ruben crouched. He ran his fingers along the baseboard, behind the potted fern.

He held up something smaller than a shirt button. A tiny wire trailed from it.

"Live," he said. "Transmitting right now."

My mouth went dry.

Last night. The drawer. The letter opener scraping the wood. Me hissing *come on, come on* at my phone.

Ruben looked up at me.

"Ma'am," he said quietly, "whoever put this here heard everything that happened in this room."