The Understudy

Chapter 4: Waiver

"It's a waiver," Eleanor said. "An amendment to your prenuptial agreement."

I looked down at my own handwriting again, like staring at it longer might make it make sense.

"I never signed a waiver."

"I know."

"Then how…."

"Someone signed it for you," Eleanor said. "Eleven months ago. Filed quietly, through the family's counsel, the same week Theo restructured his shares ahead of a potential merger."

My hands had gone cold. I set the folder down on the desk because I didn't trust myself to keep holding it steady.

"What does it do?”

"It removes your claim to any equity appreciation in Ashford and Kane accrued during the marriage." Eleanor's voice stayed level, clinical, the voice of a woman reading off a balance sheet. "In plain terms; if this holds up, you walk away from a divorce with nothing but what you brought into it."

The room tilted slightly. I put my hand flat on the desk.

"Who forged it.?”

Eleanor’s hand went still on the desk, just for a moment, the way it hadn’t for anything else all night.

"I don't know," Eleanor said. "Not for certain."

"You don't know, or you won't say."

"I don't know," she said again, sharper this time. "I found the document. I didn't find a signature. Whoever did this was careful."

"Careful enough to fool you."

"Careful enough that I only caught it because I've read your actual signature a hundred times, on a hundred other documents, and something about the T was wrong." She tapped the page. "Too clean. You rush yours. Whoever forged this one didn't know that."

I almost laughed. Almost.

"So my own handwriting saved me," I said. "That's what you're telling me."

"That's exactly what I'm telling you."

I stood up. Sat back down. My legs didn't feel entirely like mine.

"Theo wouldn't do this," I said, and heard how thin it sounded even as I said it. "He wouldn't have the nerve."

"No," Eleanor agreed. "He wouldn't. Which is precisely why I think someone did it for him. Or around him. Possibly without his knowledge at all."

I thought about that for a second…Theo, oblivious, drifting through his own marriage the way he drifted through everything, while someone else quietly rearranged the floor beneath him.

It would be exactly like him not to notice.

"Who else would benefit?”

Eleanor was quiet for a moment, turning the question over the way she seemed to turn everything over before she let it out into the room.

"Anyone who wanted this family's assets protected before a divorce became inevitable," she said. "Anyone who assumed, correctly, that you'd never think to check."

"The family's counsel," I said slowly. "Whoever drew this up."

"Grant Whitlock," Eleanor said. "He's handled this family's paperwork for twenty years. He's also, as it happens, an old friend of mine; which is the only reason I was able to pull this at all, quietly, without anyone knowing I'd looked."

My mouth had gone dry. I realized I hadn't had anything to drink since the wine at dinner, hours ago, in a different version of my life.

My phone buzzed again in my bag. I ignored it again.

"I need a lawyer," I said. "My own. Not anyone connected to this family."

"I assumed you'd say that." Eleanor slid a card across the desk; a name I didn't recognize, an address downtown. "Not Whitlock. Someone outside all of this. Discreet."

I didn't take the card yet.

"Why does this feel like you already know what I'm going to do next?”

"Because I do," Eleanor said, and for the first time all night, something that might have been the beginning of a smile crossed her face. "You're going to call your friend. The lawyer. The one who's been quietly helping you reorganize your accounts for the last two months, thinking I hadn't noticed."

My stomach dropped for an entirely different reason.

"You knew about Priya."

"I know everything that happens to money in this family, Wren. I told you that already." She sat back, folding her hands the way she had at the start of the conversation, like she was closing a meeting. "I also know she's good. Better than Whitlock, frankly, though I'd never say that where he could hear it."

I thought about all the small, careful lunches with Priya over the last two months. The paperwork I'd signed at her kitchen table instead of an office, so there'd be no record of visits.

It had nothing to do with Theo, not at first. I'd started seeing her back in the spring, after a strange half-hour where Theo's mother mentioned, almost offhand, that the accounts were being "simplified." I hadn't known what that meant. I'd wanted to know before it mattered.

I hadn't known it would matter like this.

All of it, apparently, I watched the entire time.

"How long have you known what I was doing?”

"Since your first visit to her office," Eleanor said. "I have a standing arrangement with her building's security firm. It's a small thing. It's proven useful more than once."

I stared at her, unsure whether to be grateful or afraid.

"You've been watching me."

"I've been protecting an investment," Eleanor said, without a trace of apology. "Call it whatever helps you sleep tonight."

I finally picked up the card. My hand wasn't as steady as I wanted it to be.

"If this waiver is real," I said, "if it holds…."

"It won't hold," Eleanor said. "Forged signatures don't hold up, Wren. Not when you have someone competent looking at them in time."

"In time," I repeated. "What does that mean? In time before what."

Eleanor's expression shifted, just slightly, into something I hadn't seen on her before. Something almost like worry.

"Whitlock filed an update to the estate plan two days ago," she said. "I don't know what's in it yet. I only know he moved fast, and men like him don't move fast unless someone told them to."

The clock in the hallway struck the hour, low and even, and neither of us said anything for a moment.

"Someone told him to move fast," I said. "Because someone knows I'm getting close."

Eleanor didn't answer.

She didn't have to.

My phone buzzed a third time. This time I looked.

Theo:”Where are you? Delphine just called me crying. She said Eleanor knows.”