Chapter 8: The Weight in Burgundy Silk
The gravel in the motel parking lot crunched under my tires as I pulled into my usual slot beside the dented dumpster. The neon sign above the office door was flickering, casting a pale, sickly amber glow over the asphalt and the hood of my sedan. I turned off the engine, letting the radiator tick in the quiet evening air. Then I saw her.
She was leaning against the passenger door of my car, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection over the burgundy dress she’d worn that morning in the foyer. The fabric was creased now, stained near the hem from the damp grass beside the asphalt, and her hair had lost its high-society perfection, strands coming loose in the evening wind. As my headlights swept across her, she blinked against the glare, her hand coming up instinctively to shield her eyes.
I didn't turn off the lights right away. I sat behind the wheel, my hands resting on the rubber of the steering wheel, watching the way her shoulders rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths. The silence between us stretched, filled only by the hum of the highway half a mile away and the drone of a distant air conditioner. Finally, I clicked off the ignition, pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the gravel.
"You're a long way from the terrace," I said. My voice was flat, devoid of the performance I’d kept up in front of him at the diner.
She pushed away from my car, her posture stiff, though the defiance in her eyes looked thin, frayed at the edges. "He's not there," she said, her voice small against the night. "He left for the downtown office two hours ago. Said he had meetings. But I found the desk drawer unlocked in the study. The one he always said was locked for tax reasons."
I closed my car door with a dull thud. "Why are you here?"
"Because you didn't flinch today," she answered, stepping closer, though she kept a cautious two-yard distance between us. The amber light caught the pale skin beneath her eyes. "When I saw you at the house, I thought you were just... someone he was paying off to go away quietly. That’s what he told me. He said the house was legally his, that you had signed away your interest years ago after the boy—after everything."
The mention of the boy hit the space between us like a physical blow, but I kept my face still. I had practiced that stillness in hotel mirrors for weeks. "He lies about a great deal," I said quietly.
"I know that now." She looked down at her hands, her fingers digging into the rich silk of her dress. "I went through his files while he was gone. Not the leather folder you took—he’s been looking everywhere for that, by the way, tearing the master suite apart—but the other ones. The banking statements. The property transfers."
I took a step closer, the gravel grinding under my shoe. "What did you find?"
"He's selling the coast house," she whispered, her gaze lifting to meet mine. "And the commercial lots on Fourth Street. He's liquidating everything that isn't tied directly to his corporate name. He’s turning it all into cashiers' checks and offshore wire transfers. If you wait for the court date next month, there won't be anything left to divide. The accounts will be empty."
The coldness in my chest spread through my limbs. I thought of the boxes of paperwork Marcus Vance had piled on his desk, the complex web of shell companies Richard had built over a decade. I had known he was ruthless, but stripping his own holdings down to the studs meant he was preparing to run, or worse, to declare artificial insolvency to keep every last dollar out of my reach—and out of the future he was supposedly building with the woman standing in front of me.
"And you?" I asked, studying her face in the dim light. "If he clears the accounts, what happens to you? To the child?"
A bitter, humorless smile touched the corners of her mouth. She didn't look like the triumphant figure standing in the grand foyer anymore; she looked like someone who had just realized the throne she was promised was built on sand. "He told me we’d be safe in the mountains by summer. Now I think 'safe' just means he needs someone to validate his new life while he disappears into a tax shelter in the Caymains." She shivered, pulling the thin fabric of her dress tighter around her. "I didn't drive out here to help you, at least not because I care about your settlement. I came because I checked my own personal account this afternoon. It was frozen."
I looked at her for a long, heavy moment. The anger I had carried since morning didn't vanish, but it shifted, sharpening into something practical. We were both standing in the wreckage of the same man's ambition, just on opposite sides of a very high wall.
"If you want to keep any of it," I said, my voice dropping lower, "you can't go back to that house tonight."
May you like
She stared at me, the last of her hesitation warring with fear. "And go where? I don't know anyone here. He made sure of that."
I unlocked my car door again, the interior light spilling out onto the dark asphalt, cutting a sharp yellow rectangle into the shadows. "Get in. We're going to use the phone in my room, and then we're going to call Marcus."
