I Married My Sister's Killer

Chapter 9 — Project Meridian

I find the password on a Tuesday.

It's not dramatic. I'm not hunched over a keyboard in the dark with sweat on my palms. I'm standing in Damian's home office in the middle of the afternoon while he's across town in a board meeting, and I find it the same way you find most things that have been lost: by looking in the place you were too afraid to look first.

The safe behind the painting in his study. I'd noticed the painting was hung an inch too low on one side the first week I moved in. You don't notice things like that unless you're the kind of person who grew up learning to notice everything.

The combination is his mother's birthday. I know this because I found a handwritten card in the box of Iris's things — a card Iris had written to someone she only called M. Happy birthday, the card said. March 14. I never forgot.

Damian's mother died when he was eleven. March fourteenth.

The safe opens on the third try.

Inside: a passport, some documents in a sealed envelope, and a USB drive labeled only with a single handwritten word.

Meridian.

I photograph everything before I touch it. Then I take the drive, replace the painting at its exact slight tilt, and go back to my room.

The files aren't encrypted. That surprises me. Either Damian trusted the security of the safe over the drive itself, or he wanted whoever found this to be able to read it.

I'm not sure which possibility is more unsettling.

Project Meridian is a financial shell operation. I understand maybe a third of the documentation on my own — but even a third is enough to make my chest tight. Wire transfers routed through three offshore entities. Shell companies in the Caymans, in Luxembourg, in a jurisdiction I have to look up. All of it feeding back, eventually, to a single parent account.

Voss Capital Private Holdings.

And at the bottom of one of the transfer confirmations: a name.

Not Marcus.

Not Damian.

A third name. One I don't recognize: Calloway Asset Management.

I sit with that for a long time.

Iris had the financial transfers. She had Reeves's testimony. And somewhere in those password-protected files Elena found, I'm willing to bet there's the link between Calloway, Voss, and whatever Project Meridian was actually funding.

I copy the files onto the flash drive Elena gave me and put the USB back exactly where I found it.

I'm at my vanity, pulse finally slowing, when I hear the front door.

Damian is early.

I have exactly twelve seconds to look like I haven't just been inside his safe.

I pick up a book from the nightstand and open it to the middle and sit very still.

When he knocks on the doorframe, I look up like I've been there for hours.

"You're back early," I say.

He watches me for a second longer than necessary. He does that — that watching thing, the way Elena warned me about. Like he's reading a document he already knows contains something important and he's just waiting to find the page.

"The meeting ended early," he says.

"Good meeting?"

"Productive." A pause. "Are you alright?"

The question catches me. He doesn't ask me things like that. Not directly.

"Fine," I say. "Just tired."

He nods. He doesn't move from the doorway for another beat.

Then: "I ordered dinner in. Come down when you're ready."

He leaves.

I wait until I hear his footsteps on the stairs before I let out the breath I've been holding.

Calloway Asset Management. I need that name to mean something. I need to find the thread.

I open my phone and text Elena three words: I have Meridian.