Chapter 5 - THE FRIEND WHO STOLE MY ROBE
Chloe asked to speak with me alone, but alone was no longer a word I trusted around her. We met in the glass conservatory with Marcus at my side and one federal investigator seated far enough away to give us privacy without pretending we had any.
Outside, snow rested on the hedges like white ash. Chloe looked smaller than she had the night before. Without the silk robe, the expensive makeup, and Graham’s arm around her, she seemed less like a triumphant rival and more like someone waking after a terrible decision. I did not let that soften me.
“I am cooperating,” she said. “That is wise.” “I can explain.” “You can try.” Her eyes dropped to my hands. “Are the babies okay?” I almost stood up. She knew immediately that she had made a mistake.
“They are safe,” I said. “You lost the right to ask for details when you stood in my doorway and watched them get pushed into a blizzard.” Tears appeared in her eyes, but she blinked them away. “I know.”
“No. You know you were caught.” That landed. For several seconds, neither of us spoke. Then Chloe told the story she should have told months earlier. She had learned that my marriage was failing long before I admitted it to myself. Graham started confiding in her, complaining that I was distant and secretive. He told her he suspected I had hidden money somewhere, though he imagined “hidden money” meant perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars, not a multinational empire.
Chloe knew the truth. And instead of protecting me, she decided the truth made me selfish. “I spent years watching you have everything,” she said. “You could buy any problem out of existence. You could walk into a room and never need anything from anyone. I told myself you wouldn’t even feel what I was taking.”
I stared at her. “Is that how you justified sleeping with my husband?” Her mouth tightened. “At first, it wasn’t about him.” That answer was somehow worse. Graham had asked Chloe to help search my personal files. He wanted leverage for a divorce. In exchange, he promised her money and a role in a fashion venture he planned to launch using funds from what he believed was the Mercer family trust. Chloe gave him schedules, copied old emails, and searched my office when I was at prenatal appointments.
Then the affair began. By the time she realized Graham’s financial activity was not merely aggressive but potentially criminal, she was already implicated. Vivian discovered the affair and did not object. She encouraged it. “Why?” I asked.
Chloe looked toward the glass doors, where Vivian’s silhouette passed in the distant hallway. “Because she thought Graham could remarry me after getting rid of you. She believed I could be controlled.” I felt something cold that had nothing to do with weather.
“Getting rid of me how?” “Divorce,” Chloe said quickly. “At least that’s what I thought.” Marcus leaned forward. “And now?” Chloe swallowed. Two weeks before my delivery, she had overheard Vivian speaking to an attorney about emergency custody petitions, psychiatric evaluations, and a private clinic willing to describe postpartum instability in carefully chosen language. The plan was to push me into a breakdown, document it, then argue I was unsafe around the babies.
My hands curled beneath the table. That explained the constant pressure during my final month of pregnancy. The missing medications. The staff dismissals. The repeated arguments Graham started late at night, always when someone else was close enough to hear my response.
They had not only wanted my money. They had wanted a record of me losing control. But I never did. Chloe claimed that was when she panicked. She began secretly photographing Vivian’s files for protection. In the wine cellar, behind a false panel, she found the leather ledger. It documented payments across nearly thirty years, many routed through charitable foundations and family offices.
The initials C.R. appeared repeatedly. So did D.V. Daniel Vale. My father. “Why would Vivian pay my father?” I whispered. “She may not have,” Chloe said. “Some entries are outgoing. Some are incoming.”
Marcus took the ledger from the evidence bag with gloved hands and opened it to a scanned copy investigators had already produced. There, in handwriting faded to brown, was a 2006 entry: D.V. — 2.5M — SILENCE EXTENDED — NORTHSTAR
My stomach turned. My father died in 2007. Another entry appeared six months later: C.R. — 5M — ACCIDENT CLOSED — NORTHSTAR I read those four words again. Accident closed. The official report said my father had lost control of his car on a wet road.
For nearly twenty years, I had carried that explanation like a stone. Now a ledger tied the year of his death to Caleb Rourke, Vivian Mercer, and something called Northstar. “Is there more?” I asked.
Chloe nodded. She had found a sealed envelope attached to the back cover, but when she ran with the ledger during the search, the envelope tore loose. She did not know where it fell. Vivian did.
I saw the realization in Chloe’s face before she said it. “Last night, after the agents arrived, Vivian went back to the study,” she whispered. “She was not searching for the ledger. She was searching for that envelope.”
Marcus stood immediately. The investigator across the room was already speaking into his radio. I remained seated. My anger had become something denser now, heavier than the rage I felt on the porch. The betrayal by Graham and Chloe had been personal. Ugly, intimate, humiliating.
This was different. This reached backward into the foundation of my life. Chloe looked at me as if she wanted forgiveness. I had none to offer. But I had one question. “When you stood beside Graham last night, wearing my robe, did you know they were going to put the twins outside?”
She shook her head, crying now. “No. I swear. I thought they were forcing you into a car. I thought—” “You thought enough to stay.” She covered her mouth. I rose. “Cooperate fully. Tell the truth. Accept whatever comes from your part in this.”
May you like
She looked up at me. “Will you ever forgive me?” I paused at the conservatory door. “I don’t know.” That was the truth. In the hallway, Marcus approached with an update. Agents had found the torn envelope.
Not in the study. Inside Vivian’s coat pocket. And inside the envelope was a photograph of three people standing outside a private airfield in 2006. Vivian Mercer. Caleb Rourke. And my father. On the back, someone had written a date and a single sentence. NORTHSTAR MEETING — FINAL TERMS.
