PART 38
I looked at Sarah,
the silence stretching between us like a thin wire.
"Claire,"
I whispered,
the word heavy and painful.
"Do you think she took it?"
"We checked her accounts, Emma,"
Sarah replied gently,
placing a hand over mine.
"She’s living on minimum wage at that shelter."
"She hasn't spent a dime more than her paycheck."
"We monitor her phone,
her email,
her movements."
"It wasn't her."
"Then who?"
"Ethan had an older brother,"
Sarah dropped the bombshell quietly,
pulling a faded black-and-white photo from the folder.
"His name is Thomas Lawson."
"He disappeared from the grid fifteen years ago after a military court-martial for intelligence fraud."
"We thought he was dead."
"But look at the signature on the Zurich transfer proxy."
She pointed to a small,
digital scan of a handwritten name at the bottom of the wire receipt.
It wasn't a name.
It was a small,
stylized drawing of a stone riverbed.
The original logo of River Stone Property Holdings.
Ethan hadn't created the company.
He had inherited it from his brother.
"Thomas was the original Architect,"
Sarah said,
her voice chillingly calm.
"Ethan was just the face he used when he went to prison the first time."
"And now,
Thomas has his money back."
I stood up,
walking to the window,
looking out at Noah playing in the yard.
The snake hadn't been decapitated at the pier.
We had just cut off one of its skins.
The real monster was the one who taught Ethan how to lie,
May you like
the one who had been watching from the shadows since the very beginning.
And he knew exactly who I was.
