The Vows We Never Said

Chapter Nine

Nora didn't tell Theo where she was going.

She told herself it was because the text had been explicit, because whoever this was clearly had a reason for the secrecy, because showing up with the fiancé attached might scare off the one lead they had before noon even arrived. She told herself several other things too, on the walk down to the boathouse, none of which fully addressed the fact that Theo had asked her, twice, what the message said, and both times she'd found a reason to change the subject.

Some habits, she thought, don't disappear just because you've decided to be honest about everything else.

The boathouse sat at the far edge of the property, past the cove with weathered gray shingles and a door that stuck in its frame the way it always had. Nora arrived early and waited, watching the water, running through every possibility for who might be on the other end of that number.

A woman was already inside when she pushed the door open: dark-haired, maybe mid-thirties, dressed plainly in a way that stood out sharply against everything Nora had seen at Ravensworth Hollow so far. No diamonds, no tailoring. Just a woman sitting on an overturned crate with her hands folded like she'd been rehearsing this conversation for longer than the text thread suggested.

"You came alone," the woman said. "Good. That tells me you're smarter than the last one."

"The last what?"

"The last woman I tried to warn." She gestured to the crate across from her, an invitation Nora took slowly, still cataloging every detail of the stranger in front of her the careful way she held herself, like someone accustomed to being disbelieved. "My name is Priya wilson. I used to work for Camille's family. Executive assistant, three years, before I quit."

Nora sat. "Why did you quit?"

"Because I found out what my job actually was." Priya's mouth twisted, something bitter underneath it. "I thought I was managing schedules and vendor contracts. Turns out I was managing the paper trail for something considerably worse."

"The Sutton account."

Priya's eyebrows lifted, a flicker of genuine surprise. "You found that already. Faster than I expected." She reached into a bag at her feet and pulled out a thin folder, worn soft at the corners like it had been carried around for a long time, waiting for the right hands to receive it. "This isn't the first time, Nora. Camille's done this before. Different name, different city, same pattern."

She opened the folder. Inside, clipped together, were photographs Camille, younger, standing beside a different man outside a different company's headquarters; a wedding announcement from a regional newspaper dated four years earlier; and a follow-up article eight months after that one, considerably shorter, buried in the business section: Whitmore Textiles Files for Reorganization Amid Embezzlement Investigation.

Nora stared at the clipping, feeling something cold settle into her stomach.

"She married him," she said slowly. "The first one."

"Engaged. Never quite made it to the altar; the company collapsed first, and the fiancé had a rather public breakdown when he realized what she'd actually done with three years of his trust." Priya's voice stayed level, but something underneath it had gone hard as flint. "I watched it happen from six feet away and told myself it wasn't my business. Then I watched her start circling the next one and the next, and I finally understood what her father actually does for a living. He doesn't invest in struggling companies to save them, Nora. He finds them right before they collapse, and he sends his daughter in to make sure they finish collapsing on his terms, into his hands."

"And Theo's next."

"Theo's already underway." Priya tapped the folder. "The Sutton account isn't the whole plan. It's just the piece that gets the company's assets quietly repositioned before the wedding so that when the marriage happens and legally, once it does, certain protections dissolve. Her father's firm is perfectly positioned to absorb what's left."

Nora's mind went immediately to Thursday. The visit is kept off the household calendar.

"Thursday," she said. "That's not just her father visiting. That's the final piece moving into place."

"I believe so, yes."

"Why come to me? Why not go to Theo directly, or the police, or..."

"Because I tried that with the last one." Something flickered across Priya's face, old and tired. "He didn't believe me either, right up until it was too late to matter. I'm not making that mistake again. You're the one person in that house who has enough reason to actually look and enough distance from Camille's charm to see past it." She closed the folder and held it out. "I need you to get this to Theo. Not from me from you. He might actually hear it, coming from you."

Nora took the folder, feeling its weight settle into her hands like something considerably heavier than paper.

"Why should I trust you?" she asked. "You could be part of this too, for all I know."

"You shouldn't trust me blindly. You should verify everything in that folder yourself, which I expect you will, because from what I understand, verifying things carefully is rather your entire profession." Priya stood, brushing off her jeans, already moving toward the door. "But you have until Thursday, Nora. After that, whatever's happening finishes happening, and no folder in the world will be enough to undo it."

She left the way she'd apparently arrived: quietly, without ceremony, and Nora sat alone in the boathouse for a long moment afterward, staring at a folder that held, she suspected, the exact shape of the disaster currently closing in on all of them.

Her phone buzzed. Theo.

Where are you? Camille's asking for you. Something about final approval on the floral budget. Everything okay?

Nora looked at the folder in her lap, at the photograph of a different woman standing beside a different ruined man, and typed back the only true thing she could manage.

Nothing is okay. We need to talk. Tonight. Somewhere she can't hear us.