Part 2 My fiancé was in my living room with my bos…

Part 2

My fiancé was in my living room with my boss, and both of them were standing directly under the nanny cam I installed after my porch packages went missing.

That camera cost $39.99 on Amazon.

Nolan had laughed when I bought it.

“What are you protecting?” he’d said. “Your tragic collection of throw pillows?”

Turns out, yes.

Also my career.

My bank account.

My entire future.

Claire and I stood in the stairwell, watching my phone like it was a crime scene.

The front porch camera showed Vivian stepping inside my house with my laptop bag tucked under one arm.

Nolan followed her.

He looked casual.

Too casual.

Like a man coming home from church brunch, not like a man helping his fiancée’s boss steal evidence.

Claire’s hand tightened around her folder.

“You have cameras inside?”

“One in the living room,” I said. “One facing the side door. I installed them after packages kept disappearing.”

“Can you hear audio?”

I nodded.

Claire looked at me.

“Play it.”

My thumb hovered over the screen.

I don’t know why I hesitated.

Maybe some pathetic part of me still wanted one second to believe there was a normal explanation.

Maybe Nolan had found my bag.

Maybe Vivian had—

Claire touched my wrist.

“Avery. Evidence first. Feelings later.”

That sentence snapped something into place inside me.

I hit play.

The living room camera opened.

There was my house.

The little brick bungalow outside Boston that my mother left me.

The blue couch Nolan hated.

The framed photo from my college graduation.

The Thanksgiving wreath still hanging by the hallway because I never remembered seasonal décor on time.

Vivian dropped my laptop bag onto the coffee table like it was trash.

Nolan loosened his tie.

“You’re sure Claire won’t trace it?” he asked.

Vivian laughed.

“Claire traces everything. That’s why we’re making sure she looks guilty.”

My blood went cold.

Claire didn’t move.

Not even a blink.

Vivian opened my laptop.

“She’s too arrogant,” Vivian continued. “Everyone already thinks she’s impossible. We say Claire pressured Avery into sharing proprietary files, Avery panicked, and they both get removed before final contracts.”

Nolan poured himself bourbon from my bar cart.

My bourbon.

The one my mother’s old neighbor brought after the funeral.

“And Avery?” he asked.

Vivian smiled.

“Avery will do what she always does. Apologize. Explain. Overfunction. Try to be reasonable while we bury her.”

My throat tightened.

Not with tears.

With rage.

The kind that sits very still.

Nolan chuckled.

“She is useful that way.”

Claire’s eyes flicked to me.

I kept watching.

Vivian typed something into my laptop.

“Haverford goes to Mercer Kane by Thursday,” she said. “Their CEO already agreed to pay through the consulting account.”

“Under whose name?”

Vivian looked up.

“Yours, officially.”

Nolan shook his head.

“Too risky.”

“Not if Avery signs the transfer.”

“She won’t.”

Vivian smiled again.

A slow, ugly smile.

“She already did.”

Nolan froze.

I froze too.

Claire whispered, “What does that mean?”

On-screen, Vivian pulled a folder from her purse.

Inside were papers.

My name.

My signature.

A transfer agreement for a consulting LLC I had never seen.

Then Vivian said the sentence that made my knees almost give out.

“The same way she signed away her mother’s agency shares.”

My mother.

The room tilted.

Claire caught my elbow.

“What agency shares?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

But I did know one thing.

My mother, Elise Hayes, had helped Vivian build Hartwell & Lane fifteen years earlier.

She’d left after my dad got sick.

Vivian always said my mother sold her shares during treatment to pay medical bills.

Mom had never talked about it.

By the time I was old enough to ask, she was gone.

Cancer took her in November.

The funeral was packed.

Vivian cried beside me in the church pew and called my mother “the sister I chose.”

Then she gave me a job.

Now I was watching that same woman wave forged papers around my living room.

Nolan took the documents and looked them over.

“She’ll ask questions eventually.”

Vivian snorted.

“Avery? Please. She trusts men who compliment her work and women who act maternal. It’s almost sweet.”

Claire went deadly quiet.

I kept watching.

Nolan poured another drink.

“What about Claire?”

Vivian’s face hardened.

“Claire Whitaker has been a problem since the day I hired her. Too smart. Too careful. Too unwilling to be grateful.”

“She scares you,” Nolan said.

Vivian slapped the folder shut.

“She annoys me.”

“No,” Nolan said, smiling. “She scares you.”

For one second, I saw it.

Vivian Lane, founder, shark, queen of the glass office, did not like saying Claire’s name.

Because Claire noticed things.

Claire saved receipts.

Claire asked for written confirmation.

Claire was every liar’s worst nightmare in heels.

Vivian pointed toward my laptop.

“By tomorrow morning, she’ll be suspended. Avery will be humiliated enough to cooperate. And Haverford will be ours through Mercer.”

Nolan looked toward the camera.

My stomach dropped.

Not at it.

Near it.

Still, for one awful second, I thought he knew.

Then he smiled.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m tired of pretending I want to marry someone who still lives in her dead mother’s house.”

There are sounds that change your life.

A door slamming.

A doctor clearing his throat.

A phone ringing at 2:00 a.m.

For me, it was my fiancé laughing in my living room while my boss stole my future.

Claire reached over and stopped the video.

The silence afterward was worse.

Mason looked like he might be sick.

“I can call IT,” he said.

“No,” Claire said.

Both of us looked at her.

“No?” I asked.

“If you call IT, Vivian knows we know. If Vivian knows we know, she destroys whatever she hasn’t already destroyed.”

Mason swallowed.

“She’s right.”

Claire turned to me.

“We need copies. Everything. The camera footage, server logs, original deck history, access records, every message Nolan sent you about work, every document with your signature.”

My voice came out colder than I expected.

“And then?”

Claire’s eyes met mine.

“Then we stop being women they underestimated.”

We didn’t go to drinks.

We didn’t go home.

Claire and I took Mason’s ancient Honda to a twenty-four-hour diner in Quincy where the waitress called everyone honey and the coffee tasted like burnt courage.

It was the kind of place my mother used to love.

Red vinyl booths.

Chrome edges.

American flag near the register.

A little bulletin board advertising church suppers, babysitting, AA meetings, and a used snowblower.

At 11:42 p.m., Claire slid into the booth across from me with her laptop open.

Mason sat beside her, typing like his fingers were fleeing a fire.

I stared at my phone.

Nolan had texted three times.

Where are you?

Big day tomorrow. Don’t spiral.

Avery, answer me.

Don’t spiral.

That was Nolan’s favorite phrase.

He used it whenever I asked a question he didn’t like.

Claire noticed my face.

“Do not reply.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“I was thinking about breaking his teeth with this coffee mug.”

“That would create legal complications.”

“Worth it.”

For the first time all night, Claire almost smiled.

Then she turned the laptop toward me.

“I found the external transfer path. It hit a private cloud folder registered to Mercer Kane.”

Mason whistled.

“Our rival agency.”

Claire nodded.

“Vivian has been feeding them work for months.”

“How do you know?”

She hesitated.

Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a slim black notebook.

It was worn at the edges.

Tabs everywhere.

Names.

Dates.

Initials.

Claire Whitaker didn’t have a notebook.

She had an indictment with a spiral binding.

“I’ve been tracking her since October,” she said.

Mason stared.

“October?”

Claire looked down.

“Vivian blamed my last assistant for leaking creative concepts. Lila was twenty-three. First job out of college. She cried in the supply closet for two hours and resigned before lunch.”

I remembered Lila.

Sweet girl.

Pink glasses.

Brought homemade cookies to the office after Labor Day.

Vivian had called her careless.

Claire’s jaw tightened.

“Lila didn’t leak anything. Vivian did. I couldn’t prove it then.”

“And now?” I asked.

Claire looked at me.

“Now she used your login and got sloppy.”

The waitress came by.

“You ladies need pie?”

Claire said, “Yes.”

I said, “No.”

Claire looked at me.

I sighed.

“Fine. Apple.”

“Two apple,” Claire told the waitress. “Heated.”

When the waitress left, Claire said, “Eat. Revenge requires blood sugar.”

Mason muttered, “That should be on a mug.”

At 1:08 a.m., Claire found the first forged document.

A consulting agreement.

My signature at the bottom.

Not terrible.

Not perfect.

But close enough.

At 1:36, Mason found a secret bank account.

Registered under Hayes Strategy Consulting LLC.

Opened three months earlier.

Deposits from Mercer Kane.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

Then another.

Then another.

By 2:10 a.m., my name was attached to nearly half a million dollars I had never seen.

I sat back in the booth.

The diner suddenly felt too bright.

Too loud.

Too ordinary.

A man in a Patriots hoodie laughed near the counter.

Someone’s fork hit a plate.

Outside, rain washed down the windows.

Claire closed her laptop halfway.

“Avery.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re not breathing right.”