Chapter 7 - He Planned To Make Me The Criminal
Natalie’s box contained copies of twenty-six invoices.
All approved under my name.
Eleven vendor agreements.
All carrying my forged signature.
Three internal emails supposedly sent from an account I had never used.
And one memorandum identifying me as financial liaison for North River Lifestyle Holdings.
I stared at the pages.
“He was going to blame all of this on me.”
Natalie nodded.
“That’s what I believed.”
Rebecca crossed her arms.
“Why didn’t you report it?”
Natalie’s eyes lowered.
“Because he had leverage.”
“What leverage?”
“My son had a drug problem.”
She swallowed.
“He was arrested two years ago. Ryan found out. He told me if I made trouble, he’d make sure every board member and future employer knew.”
I felt anger rising again.
“He blackmailed you.”
“Yes.”
“Did Patricia know?”
“No.”
“Thomas?”
“No.”
Natalie had spent twenty years at Mercer Development.
She had known Ryan since he was a teenager.
“He wasn’t always like this,” she said.
I had heard that sentence too many times already.
Maybe because everyone wanted to believe there had been a clean line between good Ryan and bad Ryan.
There hadn’t.
There had only been choices.
Small ones at first.
Then larger ones.
Natalie continued.
“After his father died, Ryan became obsessed with proving he deserved the company.”
Patricia’s husband, Harold, had died four years earlier.
Ryan had taken it personally when Patricia refused to immediately appoint him CEO.
“He said she was humiliating him.”
“That sounds like Ryan.”
“He believed the company should automatically become his.”
Rebecca tapped one invoice.
“How does Emma fit into this?”
Natalie looked at me.
“Ryan thought Patricia trusted you.”
“She does.”
“He hated that.”
That surprised me.
Ryan had always joked that his mother liked me more than him.
I assumed it was harmless.
Apparently he hadn’t.
Natalie continued.
“Several times, Patricia asked you to review renovation budgets.”
I remembered.
Nothing important.
At least I had thought so.
I was a project operations consultant, and numbers were part of my work.
Patricia respected my judgment.
“Ryan believed if the fraud was eventually discovered, documents carrying your name would create two outcomes.”
“What outcomes?”
“First, investigators would focus on you.”
“And second?”
“Patricia would feel personally betrayed.”
I understood.
He wanted to destroy my credibility with the one person capable of stopping him.
Rebecca leaned back.
“So he could emerge as the family member fixing Emma’s mess.”
Natalie nodded.
I felt nauseated.
The affair suddenly looked smaller.
Ryan had not simply wanted another woman.
He wanted another life.
A life where I became the villain.
Where he became CEO.
Where Lauren became his new partner.
Where Hawthorne became his fortune.
And where everyone believed I had stolen from his family.
“How close was he?” I asked.
Natalie hesitated.
“Very.”
If Lauren’s accidental text had not arrived, I might have remained unaware.
If the private investigator had not photographed Ryan leaving her apartment, I might have let him explain it away.
If I had not reviewed the savings account, I might never have found the first transfer.
One deleted message had cracked open an entire machine.
By afternoon, Detective Collins had Natalie's statement.
A federal financial investigator was contacted because some transfers crossed state lines.
Ryan stopped calling.
That silence worried me more than the screaming.
At six, I packed a bag.
Rebecca recommended I stay elsewhere temporarily.
Patricia offered her house.
I declined.
Not because I didn’t trust her.
Because I wanted somewhere Ryan wouldn’t immediately think to look.
My sister, Molly, lived in Seattle.
I planned to drive north.
I had almost reached Vancouver, Washington, when my phone rang through the car speakers.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then Ryan.
“Running away?”
I gripped the steering wheel.
“How did you get this number?”
He laughed.
“It’s your number, Emma.”
I realized he had borrowed someone’s phone.
“Where are you?”
“Why?”
“So I can tell police.”
“Still dramatic.”
I almost hung up.
Then he said, “Lauren isn’t telling you everything.”
I stayed quiet.
“You think she’s some scared little victim now?”
“I don’t think anything about Lauren.”
“She knew about North River.”
“She signed documents.”
“She knew more than that.”
“What?”
“She knew Hawthorne was coming.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror.
A dark SUV had been behind me for several miles.
Probably nothing.
Still, my pulse quickened.
Ryan continued.
“She was going to leave you too.”
“Lauren isn’t married to me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Ryan. I stopped knowing what you mean a long time ago.”
He exhaled.
“I loved you.”
Past tense.
Strangely, it didn’t hurt.
“Maybe you did.”
“I did.”
“You just loved yourself more.”
Silence.
Then his voice became colder.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“With what?”
“Taking this public.”
“I haven’t spoken publicly.”
“My name is everywhere.”
“Because your company fired you.”
“My company.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The part where you think everything belongs to you.”
He said nothing.
I looked in the rearview mirror again.
The SUV was closer.
“Ryan, are you following me?”
A pause.
“No.”
Too slow.
My skin prickled.
I moved into the right lane.
The SUV followed.
I exited toward a gas station.
The SUV exited too.
I called 911 from my second phone while keeping Ryan talking.
“You should turn around,” he said.
“Why?”
“We need to fix this.”
“There is no this.”
“We have seven years.”
“We had seven years.”
“You really want to throw them away?”
I pulled beneath the bright lights of the gas station.
The SUV stopped near the road.
I could not see the driver.
Two other cars were fueling nearby.
Good.
I remained locked inside.
Ryan’s voice softened.
“Emma. Come home.”
For one dangerous second, grief squeezed my chest.
Not love.
Grief for the version of my life I had believed in.
Then I remembered him practicing my signature.
I remembered the insurance policy.
“No.”
The SUV accelerated away.
Ryan hung up.
Police arrived seven minutes later.
They could not confirm who had been driving.
But security footage captured part of the license plate.
The vehicle was registered to Mercer Development.
A company SUV Ryan no longer had permission to use.
That night, police found it abandoned outside Portland.
No Ryan.
But inside the SUV was my old scarf.
One I had not seen in months.
And in the glove compartment was a printed copy of my divorce petition.
May you like
Across the first page, Ryan had written one sentence in black ink.
YOU DON’T GET TO LEAVE WITH EVERYTHING.
