Chapter 13 - The First Name
Claire Bennett.
$240,000.
Not medical debt relief.
Separate payments.
Spread across eighteen months.
I looked at every date.
The first payment arrived before Claire and I met.
So Victor did not recruit her after our relationship began.
He placed her near me.
Claire’s earlier story collapsed.
Again.
She stopped denying when shown the ledger.
“My uncle said you needed someone stable.”
“A fiancée?”
“At first, just someone close.”
“What was your job?”
“Listen.”
“To what?”
“Your conversations. Your schedules. Whether you knew about Northstar.”
“And when did pretending become an engagement?”
Her eyes filled.
“I didn’t pretend all of it.”
That was almost crueler.
She claimed she genuinely developed feelings for me.
Maybe she did.
People can betray you and still feel things.
Feelings do not purify choices.
“What did you report?”
She admitted giving Victor information about my meetings, travel, and conversations with Luca.
She denied giving him operational secrets connected to criminal activity.
That distinction would matter to lawyers.
Not to me.
Then I pointed at Mia’s name in Adrian’s note.
“Why did Mia say Harper wasn’t safe with you?”
Claire broke.
“She saw me give Victor your schedule.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Mia confronted her.
Claire begged her to stay quiet.
Mia refused.
That was when Victor ordered Claire to monitor her constantly.
Then came the worst admission.
Claire had begun resenting Harper months earlier.
“Why?”
Claire whispered:
“Because you trusted Mia more than me.”
I stared at her.
“Mia was my brother’s widow.”
“And Harper was always there.”
“She’s a baby.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
The same ugly jealousy surfaced again.
Claire had not targeted Harper with elaborate violence.
But Mia had noticed impatience.
Rough handling.
Unnecessary isolation.
That was why she began preparing to leave.
I thought back to Harper’s unnatural silence.
The way she clung to me.
The raised voices I had dismissed as household stress.
My own blindness became part of the case.
Then the recipient list gave us another name.
Samuel Crowe.
$80,000.
Samuel had claimed he refused Victor.
Why was he paid?
Investigators asked him.
He didn’t lie.
“I took money.”
“For what?”
“To disappear.”
Victor paid him after Adrian discovered the scheme.
Samuel accepted in exchange for leaving New York and saying nothing.
He had not been forced into hiding.
He had been bought.
Then he tried to help Mia when guilt finally caught up with him.
Another compromised witness.
Another truth with two sides.
But the final name mattered more.
Luca Moretti.
$150,000.
My security chief stared at the page.
“I never received that money.”
May you like
The bank routing number beneath his name said otherwise.
📖 Adrian’s list now implicated Luca, the man guarding Harper beside me, and proving whether he was framed or bought would determine who I could trust in my own house. 👇
