By the time my husband raised the hickory cane for the twentieth time, I no longer wondered whether my marriage could be saved. I wondered whether the man I had loved for nine years had ever existed at all. The stranger standing over me in our Manhattan penthouse wore Matthew Hayes’s face, Matthew Hayes’s wedding ring, and another woman’s perfume.
Chapter 3
Before leaving the hospital, I photographed Eleanor’s latest bloodwork. Dad’s physician examined it and found evidence that someone had been giving her dangerous additional doses of heart medication. What appeared to be natural cardiac decline could have been deliberate poisoning.
Luke traced the timing. Eleanor’s condition had worsened soon after Lauren began visiting regularly.
Whatever anger I had once felt toward my mother-in-law disappeared. “We save her,” I told Dad.
He studied me for a long moment. “Even after everything?”
“This isn’t revenge anymore.”
That was the moment my father smiled with something warmer than pride.
At the Catskills cabin, Henderson, two security men, and I found the safe exactly where Eleanor had promised. Inside were old research papers and a thirty-year-old contract involving Vanguard Corporation and Matthew’s late father. The technology Matthew was trying to sell had a complicated history, including a repurchase clause that could return important intellectual property to the Hayes family.
Then my phone buzzed.
Luke’s message made my blood run cold.
Lauren had removed Eleanor from the hospital.
Seconds later, footsteps sounded overhead.
Masked men attacked the house. One security officer went down, and another man grabbed me from behind demanding the documents. Before they could drag me upstairs, the basement window shattered and a man in tactical gear came through it like a shadow.
Within seconds, he had two attackers on the floor.
“Claire Vance,” he said, pulling off his mask. “Special Agent Ethan Reynolds, FBI counterintelligence. Your father knows me.”
That was how I learned the federal government had been watching Matthew and Lauren long before my marriage collapsed.
Vanguard wanted technology capable of compromising secure communications, and Lauren appeared to be working directly for them. Agent Reynolds also knew where she had taken Eleanor—to a Long Island house controlled by Matthew.
We followed.
After agents lured Lauren away, we entered the house and found Eleanor tied to a bed with a lethal drug mixture feeding through an IV. She survived because we reached her in time. Hidden nearby were forged medical records, a fraudulent will, and a flash drive containing emails between Lauren and Vanguard.
The FBI decided to let Lauren believe Eleanor had died. If Lauren thought the last obstacle was gone, she would push Matthew to complete the transfer.
Meanwhile, Chloe’s investigation hit the front page. Nexus Core lost billions in market value, banks issued margin calls, and Matthew’s remaining clients fled. The empire I had helped him build was collapsing piece by piece.
When Matthew confronted me privately at Zenith Partners, he finally admitted he knew Claire Vance was me. He looked twenty years older.
“Lauren played me,” he said. “Help me get out. I’ll divorce her from my life. I’ll give you anything.”
“You don’t understand,” I replied. “There is nothing left that I want from you.”
He sank to his knees.
Once, that sight would have broken me. Now I understood that remorse meant little when it appeared only after consequences arrived.
“The thing I regret most isn’t loving you,” I told him. “It’s failing to leave the first time you hurt me.”
Still, I warned him. “Cancel the Vanguard transfer. If you finish it, you may spend the rest of your life regretting something much bigger than what you did to me.”
He refused.
That night, Agent Reynolds told me the handoff had been moved to an abandoned warehouse. To force Lauren into exposing herself, the FBI staged my kidnapping. I sat tied loosely to a chair while hidden agents surrounded the building.
Lauren arrived with armed men.
She slapped me, demanded the old documents, and finally exploded when I mentioned Eleanor’s poisoning. “I spent three years pretending to love that idiot for this technology,” she screamed.
Floodlights came on.
“FBI!” Reynolds shouted.
Lauren seized me and pressed a gun to my head, but I drove my elbow backward and broke free. Reynolds tackled her, and agents secured the room.
Then we discovered Matthew wasn’t there.
Lauren had sent him one final message: INITIATE PLAN B. USUAL PLACE.
I knew exactly where he had gone.
The small Brooklyn warehouse where Matthew and I had started Nexus Core.
When Reynolds and I arrived, another message came over the radio.
Richard Sterling had entered the building alone.
I ran before anyone could stop me.
Inside, my father stood beneath the old warehouse lights while Matthew aimed a gun at him. Two foreign buyers waited nearby, and Matthew held the technology drive in his other hand.
“You all ruined me!” Matthew screamed. “You took my company, my money, everything!”
Dad did not flinch. “You did that yourself.”
Matthew lifted the gun.
I stepped between them.
“Then shoot me.”
