The Vows We Never Said

Chapter Eight

"The Sutton account," Theo repeated, staring at Nora's phone screen like the words might rearrange themselves into something that made sense. "I've never heard of it."

"Neither have I." Nora took the phone back, thumb hovering over the unknown number. "Who else would even know to text me? Nobody outside this property knows I'm connected to any of this."

"Someone inside it, clearly." Theo's voice had lost every trace of the calm he'd carried all evening. "Come on. My office has access to the company's financial records. If there's a Sutton account anywhere in our system, I'll find it."

They cut across the dark lawn together, moving fast, the earlier softness between them replaced by something more urgent, not quite fear, but close enough to it that Nora didn't argue when Theo's hand found the small of her back to steer her around a low hedge she hadn't seen in the dark.

His office sat in the east wing, the one section of the house that had clearly been renovated recently: clean lines, good lighting, nothing like the faded grandeur of the rest of the estate. He dropped into the chair behind his desk and woke three monitors at once, fingers moving fast over the keyboard with the particular focus of a man grateful, for once, to have a concrete problem instead of an emotional one.

"Here." He turned one monitor toward her. "Sutton Holdings. Registered eighteen months ago, address in Providence. It's listed as a vendor account under our facilities division."

"What kind of vendor?"

"That's the problem. It's not tied to any actual services I can find: no invoices for landscaping, catering, or security—nothing that would explain regular payments going out." He clicked through another screen, jaw tightening with every second. "There's a payment schedule, though. Quarterly, going back a year and a half. Six figures, every time."

Nora leaned closer, scanning the numbers. "Who authorized it?"

Theo went very still.

"Camille," he said quietly. "As acting facilities liaison,. It's a role she took on last year, when I was buried in the downtown headquarters relocation. I signed off on giving her authorization access without hesitation; I trusted her with it. I didn't think to check what she was doing with it."

"So she's been quietly moving company money into a shell account for eighteen months."

"It looks that way." He scrubbed a hand down his face and for a moment looked less like the composed head of a hospitality empire and more like a man watching the floor open up beneath him in slow motion. "That's not a wedding fund, Nora. That's embezzlement. That's the kind of thing that ends companies, not just engagements."

Nora's mind raced back through everything she'd learned in the past two days: the overheard call, the photograph from eleven years ago, and her father's carefully scheduled, off-calendar visit.

"It's not just embezzlement," she said slowly. "Think about the timeline. The call you overheard close this before the party. Her father flying in Thursday kept quiet on purpose. What if the Sutton account isn't the whole plan? What if it's just the mechanism she's been using to fund something bigger, and Thursday is when they finalize it?"

"Finalize what?"

"I don't know yet." Nora looked back at the screen, at eighteen months of six-figure payments disappearing into an account with no real purpose behind it. "But someone out there wanted us to find this tonight, specifically before Thursday. That's not a coincidence either."

Theo sat back in his chair, staring at the monitor like it had personally betrayed him, which, in a way, it had.

"I need to know who sent that text," he said.

"So do I." Nora pulled out her own phone again, staring at the unknown number, a strange cocktail of dread and something close to hope moving through her chest. Someone in this house or close enough to it to know these details wanted the truth to come out. That meant, whatever else was happening here, they weren't as alone in this as they'd felt an hour ago on the dock.

She typed a single line back to the unknown number, watched the message send, and held her breath.

Who is this, and why are you helping us?

The reply came almost immediately, three dots appearing and disappearing twice before the message finally landed.

Someone who's been trying to stop this longer than you have. Meet me at the boathouse tomorrow at noon. Come alone and don't tell Theo where you're going.

Nora stared at the screen, at the last four words in particular, and felt the fragile trust she and Theo had rebuilt over the last hour c***k right back open.

She looked up at him, weighing exactly how much of this message she was willing to share, and understood, with a sinking certainty, that whatever came next, she was about to have to choose between two different kinds of trust and she didn't yet know which one deserved to win.