Chapter 5
Nathan was not one of them.
Neither was Brynn.
The investor had approached me six weeks earlier about purchasing a minority stake in Whitmore Studio.
I had not decided whether I wanted to sell.
The preliminary valuation was a number large enough that I had written it on paper once, stared at it, and immediately shredded the page.
Evan looked at me.
“Does someone have a reason to care about the ownership of your company?”
My mind moved faster than I could answer.
Nathan and I had signed a postnuptial agreement five years earlier after I took outside investment into the firm.
Whitmore Studio remained my separate property.
Nathan knew that.
He had complained about it only once.
At the time, I thought he was joking.
“If that company ever becomes worth fifty million dollars,” he had said, “I’ll be the idiot married to the woman who owns it.”
I had laughed.
He hadn’t.
At 9:11, the unauthorized user opened the preliminary investment valuation.
Then the connection ended.
Nathan called me less than three minutes later.
I answered.
“Morning.”
His voice was careful.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t answer last night.”
“I was tired.”
There was a pause.
“Did Brynn text you?”
I looked at Evan.
He stopped typing.
Nathan had made his first mistake.
I kept my voice flat.
“Why would Brynn text me?”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
“No reason. She just mentioned she might.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, Laurel. I was just asking.”
I let the silence stretch.
Nathan filled it, exactly as nervous people often do.
“I’m going to shower. Are you working all day?”
“Probably.”
“Okay.”
He hesitated.
“Love you.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Bye, Nathan.”
I hung up.
Evan stared at me.
“He knows she sent something.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
He gave a slow nod.
“Then whatever happens next, save everything.”
At noon, I called my attorney.
Her name was Dana Mercer.
Dana had handled the company restructuring five years earlier and helped draft my postnuptial agreement.
I told her only the business facts at first.
Forty-three accesses.
Confidential files.
Potential theft of proprietary information.
Possible involvement by someone with access to my home.
She listened without interrupting.
Then I told her about the photograph.
Dana sighed.
“I was wondering when we’d get to the personal part.”
“I don’t want a personal answer.”
“Good.”
“I want to know what I can prove.”
“That’s better.”
Dana told me not to confront Nathan.
She also told me not to throw him out of the house yet.
“Why not?”
“Because right now he believes you know about an affair.”
“He may know I know.”
“Exactly. Let him believe that is all you know.”
The sentence made sense immediately.
If Nathan thought I was devastated by infidelity, he might underestimate everything else I was doing.
Dana asked me to send her copies of the logs.
Then she asked a question I hadn’t considered.
“Does Brynn have any formal relationship with your company?”
“No.”
“Has she ever done contract work?”
“Once. Four years ago. She helped with an opening event.”
“Was she given system access?”
“Temporary access.”
“Was it revoked?”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“I assume so.”
“Don’t assume anything.”
I called Evan again.
Twenty minutes later, he confirmed Brynn’s old company account had been disabled years earlier.
But the audit log showed something strange.
Three of the forty-three accesses had been routed through credentials originally associated with that old account.
May you like
Not the account itself.
A legacy API token linked to it.
