Chapter 8: What He Knew
1360 Words
WREN POV
“How long, Seth.”
Not a question. My voice came out flat and quiet and I watched him register the difference.
“Three weeks,” he said.
“Three weeks.”
“Yes.”
The car was moving through Midtown. The city outside looked the same as always, all lit up and busy and completely indifferent. I stared at the back of the driver’s seat and kept my breathing even.
“So while I was signing paperwork and moving into your building and doing press appearances with you,” I said slowly, “you already knew Diane Briggs was involved.”
“I suspected. I didn’t have proof.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He was quiet.
“I asked if you knew.”
“Yes,” he said. “I knew enough.”
I turned to look at him properly. He was watching me already. Not defensive, not making excuses with his face. Just watching and waiting and being exactly as calm as he always was, which right now was making everything worse.
“What exactly did you know?” I said.
“I suspected Diane had a hand in the Briggs Group numbers being what they are. The financial patterns inside the company, certain decisions that were made, certain contracts that went through when they shouldn’t have. I’d been tracking it for months before I approached you.”
“And the personal side? Lacey? The introduction? All of it being set up?”
“That I didn’t know. Not until three weeks ago.”
“What happened three weeks ago?”
“I got information. A source I have inside the company flagged something. A payment from a private account connected to Diane that went to a PR firm around the same time Lacey was introduced to Owen.” He paused. “It suggested the whole thing was arranged. But I didn’t know how deep it went or who else was involved.”
“So you had three weeks,” I said. “Three weeks of knowing this woman helped destroy my marriage. And you said nothing.”
“I was building the picture.”
“You were making decisions for me.”
He went quiet.
“That’s what you did,” I said. “You decided I couldn’t handle partial information so you just didn’t give me any. You decided the timing wasn’t right so you waited. You made that call without asking me.” My voice stayed level but my hands were tight in my lap. “That is the same thing Owen did.”
The silence that came after that was different.
I saw it land. Actually saw it hit him. Something in his jaw, a small tightening. His eyes dropped for just a second before they came back up.
He did not argue with me.
He said, “You’re right.”
Just that. No but, no explanation on top of it. Just those two words sitting there between us for the rest of the drive home.
We got back to the penthouse and I went to my room and closed the door.
I did not slam it. I thought about it. But slamming it would have felt like losing something and I did not want to lose anything else this week.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and just breathed for a while.
He made that decision for me.
The worst part was that I understood the logic. I did. Partial information would have made me act early and acting early would have tipped Diane off and the whole plan would have fallen apart. I understood it completely.
That did not make it okay.
I did not come out until morning. He did not knock.
The knock came at seven-fifteen but it was not on my door.
I opened it to find a coffee on the floor outside. A proper one, from the machine in the kitchen, in the tall white cup I had started using. Still warm.
No note. No apology. Just coffee.
I picked it up. Stood in the doorway for a second. I was still angry. That had not gone anywhere overnight. But something about the simplicity of it, just coffee, no words, no trying to fix it or talk it through before I was ready, took something small off the top.
Ten percent maybe.
I drank it at my window watching the morning come up over the city.
Cal appeared at nine.
“Briggs Group update,” he said when I opened the door.
“Come in.”
He sat at the small table near the window. Pulled out a folder. He had the kind of organised energy that made you feel like everything was being handled even when the world was on fire.
“We’re at sixty-one percent of the shares needed for a majority vote,” he said. “At the current rate, three months.”
“Can we move faster?”
He looked at me. That steady, measuring look he had. Something shifted in it. Not quite approval, but close.
“With the right push, yes,” he said.
“Then let’s push.” I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down. “I want to know everything about Diane Briggs. Her role in the company, every connection, every meeting that went through her. Whatever Seth knows, whatever you know.”
Cal looked at me for a moment. Then he opened the folder properly.
“This might take a while,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Two hours.
We sat at that table for two full hours and by the time Cal closed the folder and stood up I had a map of Diane Briggs in my head that felt like holding something sharp. Every board connection. Every decision she had quietly steered from the background while Owen stood at the front and took credit. Every financial thread that ran through her hands before it became official company business.
She had been running that company for years. Owen was just the face she put on it.
“Thank you,” I said when Cal stood to leave.
He nodded. Then, at the door, he paused.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “Seth should have told you sooner.”
I looked at him.
“That’s not nothing,” he added. And then he left.
I sat alone in the quiet for a while after that. Thinking. Processing. Turning the map of Diane over and over in my head and fitting it against everything Lacey had told me the night before.
Diane set it up. She planted Lacey. She managed the timeline. She probably signed off on the gala announcement because a clean public break meant Owen walked away without a messy divorce and Wren got nothing she hadn’t already agreed to.
Except Wren did not agree to anything.
Wren had just been the last person in the room to know.
My phone rang.
I nearly let it go. I had been letting calls go for days. But the name on the screen made me pick up.
June. My little sister.
“Hey,” I said.
“Sit down,” she said immediately.
Her voice was tight. Low. The voice she used when something was actually wrong.
“I’m already sitting.”
“Okay.” A breath. “I was closing an old account for Dad. He asked me to sort it out last month and I finally got around to it today.” Another breath. “Wren, there’s a transfer. A big one. From one of his private accounts.”
I went still.
“Okay.”
“I wasn’t supposed to see it. It was buried and I only found it because I was going through everything line by line to close it out properly.” Her voice dropped lower. “The name on the transfer, Wren.”
“June.”
“It’s Seth Maren.“
- Writer
