Chapter 12 - What Monique KnewMonique did not know about the surveillance.
Darius believed her because when Camille explained it, Monique ran to the bathroom and vomited.
They met at Camille’s office with Erica Hall, the family-law attorney who would represent Darius separately.
No one treated reconciliation as the goal.
No one treated divorce as inevitable either.
They treated facts as facts.
Monique returned from the bathroom pale.
“She could read everything?”
“Potentially,” Camille said.
“My conversations with Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“My conversations with my sister?”
“Possibly.”
Monique covered her mouth.
Darius felt a flicker of sympathy and immediately hated it.
Then he reminded himself that sympathy was not forgiveness.
“You accepted the phone from her,” he said.
Monique looked at him.
“I know.”
“What did you think she was getting out of it?”
“Control.”
“You knew that.”
“Yes.”
“Just not how much.”
“Yes.”
Erica asked Monique to explain the twenty-five-thousand-dollar payment.
Monique did.
Two model-unit consultations had been real.
The payment was not.
Denise transferred the money through Cole Property Group as a vendor expense.
“Did Denise ask you to do anything in exchange?” Erica asked.
“Not directly.”
“Indirectly?”
“She said, ‘Now nobody has to hurt anybody before the refinance.’”
Darius looked away.
Monique continued.
“I knew what she meant.”
“So you understood the payment helped secure your silence?” Erica asked.
“Yes.”
“Why did you take it?”
Monique stared at her hands.
“Because I was terrified.”
“Of losing your marriage?”
“Yes.”
Darius laughed under his breath.
Monique looked at him.
“I know how disgusting that sounds.”
“You were terrified of losing the marriage while continuing the affair.”
“Yes.”
“At some point you need a different word than terrified.”
She nodded, crying.
“Cowardly.”
That silenced him.
Monique took a breath.
“I was cowardly.”
She turned toward Darius.
“You worked constantly after your father died. Denise called five times a day. Every family dinner became a company meeting. Every vacation got interrupted.”
Darius’s face hardened.
“Careful.”
“I’m not blaming you.”
“It sounds like the runway is being built.”
“No.”
Monique wiped her face.
“Our marriage had problems.”
“Yes.”
“I cheated because I chose to cheat.”
Darius said nothing.
“Both things can be true.”
That was harder to reject.
She continued.
“Adrian made me feel visible. Then I found the trust documents. I told him. He became more interested. I should have noticed.”
“When?”
“December.”
“What did you find?”
“A Greenhouse statement and a draft trust accounting.”
“You understood it?”
“Enough to see numbers didn’t match.”
“What numbers?”
“The trust accounting showed a Greenhouse receivable of four hundred eighty thousand.”
Darius leaned forward.
“Receivable?”
“Yes.”
“That means Greenhouse owed the trust.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But Denise told us approximately four hundred remains unpaid now.”
“Right.”
“So the amount was higher before.”
Monique nodded.
“There was another entry.”
“What?”
“An account called management adjustment.”
Camille asked, “Amount?”
“One hundred forty thousand.”
“Payable or receivable?”
“Expense.”
“To whom?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
Darius looked at Kenneth’s preliminary spreadsheet.
They had not identified that category.
“Do you still have the photograph?”
“Yes.”
She handed Camille a flash drive.
Darius stared at it.
“When did you copy all this?”
“January.”
“And then you threatened my mother with it.”
“Yes.”
“Why not come to me?”
Monique’s eyes filled.
“Because by then she knew I was cheating.”
“You could have told me both.”
“I was afraid you’d hate me.”
“I do hate what you did.”
“I know.”
“You traded telling me the truth for protection.”
“Yes.”
Darius stood and walked toward the window.
Monique’s voice followed him.
“I convinced myself I was buying time to end the affair and fix us.”
He looked back.
“Everybody in this story keeps buying time with something that belongs to me.”
No one answered.
Camille inserted the flash drive into an isolated laptop.
The photograph appeared.
Trust accounting.
Greenhouse receivable: $480,000.
Management adjustment: $140,000.
Then Kenneth, joining by speakerphone, asked Camille to zoom into the footnote.
She did.
The footnote referenced an entity.
DC Legacy Services LLC.
Darius frowned.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
Monique went still.
“What?” he asked.
“I have.”
“Where?”
“Denise’s files.”
“What is it?”
Monique shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Camille searched the state corporate registry.
The entity had been formed five years earlier.
Owner information was private.
Registered agent: Franklin Moore.
Denise’s current attorney.
Darius felt another layer peel away.
Then Camille searched the address.
A mailbox service.
Kenneth said, “I’ll trace payments.”
Darius stared at the initials.
DC.
Denise Cole.
Or Darius Cole.
His stomach tightened.
“What if she put it in my name?”
Camille looked at him.
“We verify.”
An hour later Kenneth called back.
DC Legacy Services had received $140,000 from Cole Property Group over three years.
Its tax identification paperwork listed a beneficial owner.
Denise Cole.
But the vendor authorization form carried another signature.
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Darius’s.
One he had never made.
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