Chapter 8 - What Lauren Finally Admitted
I reached Seattle at midnight.
Molly opened her door wearing pajama pants and holding a baseball bat.
When she saw me, she dropped it.
Then she hugged me so tightly I finally cried.
Not elegant tears.
Not cinematic tears.
The ugly kind.
I cried for seven years.
For my marriage.
For my friendship.
For my own embarrassment.
For every moment I had ignored because I wanted peace more than truth.
Molly didn’t tell me to calm down.
She didn’t say everything happened for a reason.
She just held me.
The next morning, she made pancakes.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I mean emotionally.”
“Much better.”
She smiled.
Then my phone rang.
Patricia.
“Emma, Lauren is asking for you.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s at my house.”
I sat up.
“Why?”
“She says Ryan went to her apartment again.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is he there?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“He left something.”
“What?”
“A sonogram.”
I went silent.
“He wrote on it.”
“What did he write?”
Patricia hesitated.
“Ask Emma what happens if she destroys our child’s future.”
I closed my eyes.
Ryan had found a new weapon.
Guilt.
He knew I had once wanted a baby.
He knew I would never blame a child.
And now he was framing his consequences as something I was doing to his unborn baby.
“Tell Lauren none of this is her child’s fault.”
“I did.”
“And none of it is mine.”
“I told her that too.”
At noon, Rebecca joined by video call.
Lauren sat beside Patricia.
I sat with Molly in Seattle.
Detective Collins listened remotely.
Lauren looked exhausted.
“I need to tell Emma the rest.”
I braced myself.
“Go ahead.”
“The apartment wasn’t only for us.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“Ryan used it for meetings.”
“With whom?”
“Investors.”
“What investors?”
“I don’t know all of them.”
Of course.
“But one was a man named Victor Shaw.”
Patricia’s expression changed immediately.
“Victor Shaw?”
“You know him?” I asked.
“He runs Shaw Pacific Development.”
Thomas had mentioned that company before.
A competitor.
A ruthless one.
Lauren continued.
“Ryan met him at the apartment three times.”
“Why secretly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lauren.”
She looked at me.
“I wasn’t allowed in the room.”
That detail sounded believable because it was exactly the kind of humiliation Ryan disguised as importance.
“He told you to leave?”
“Yes.”
“What did you hear?”
“They talked about Hawthorne.”
Patricia leaned toward the screen.
“What specifically?”
“Shaw wanted the land.”
Of course he did.
“Ryan said he could get it.”
“How?”
“He said once he became CEO, his mother would be ceremonial.”
Patricia actually laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the arrogance was breathtaking.
Lauren continued.
“Victor asked about board approval.”
“What did Ryan say?”
“That he had leverage.”
My stomach tightened.
“What leverage?”
“I don’t know.”
Patricia looked unsettled.
“What leverage could he have against the board?”
Thomas joined the call several minutes later.
When he heard Victor Shaw’s name, he searched company records.
Then he found something.
Three Mercer board members had consulting arrangements with companies indirectly connected to Shaw Pacific.
Not necessarily illegal.
But suspicious.
One member, Leonard Graves, had pushed hardest for Ryan’s CEO appointment.
Another had supported the low valuation of Hawthorne.
Patricia became furious.
“This was coordinated.”
Thomas replied, “Possibly.”
The scandal widened.
By evening, Mercer Development announced an independent outside audit.
Ryan’s allies on the board stepped aside temporarily.
Shaw Pacific denied wrongdoing.
Victor Shaw refused comment.
Ryan remained missing.
Then Lauren said something that changed my understanding of her role.
“There’s another reason I stayed with him.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
Her eyes filled.
“He invested my money.”
“What money?”
“My inheritance.”
Lauren’s grandmother had died two years earlier.
I knew she had left Lauren something.
I didn’t know how much.
“About three hundred thousand.”
My anger paused.
“Ryan took it?”
“He said he invested it in North River.”
“Did he?”
Thomas looked at the records.
Only eighty thousand of Lauren’s inheritance had entered North River.
The rest vanished through two transfers.
One to Nevada.
One to Cascade Consulting.
Lauren began crying.
“He told me I was going to be financially free.”
I stared at her.
“Did that happen before or after you started sleeping with him?”
Her face burned.
“Before.”
There it was.
Ryan had not chosen Lauren randomly.
He had started by helping her with money.
Then confiding in her.
Then complaining about me.
Then offering a business dream.
Then turning it into an affair.
Lauren was responsible for betraying me.
But Ryan had also targeted her weaknesses.
Both truths could exist.
“What was Cascade Consulting?” I asked.
Nobody knew.
Until Molly, who had been silent beside me, spoke.
“Can I see the address?”
Thomas displayed the registration.
Molly leaned closer.
“That building doesn’t exist anymore.”
“What?”
“I lived in Reno for four years. That block is storage warehouses.”
Thomas searched further.
Cascade Consulting had one listed officer.
A woman named Diane Cole.
Patricia whispered, “No.”
“What?”
She stared at the screen.
“Diane Cole was Harold’s assistant.”
“Ryan’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
Patricia looked at me.
“She died three years ago.”
Silence.
The company had been formed six months after Diane’s death.
Using a dead woman’s name.
Thomas began pulling state filings.
The Nevada account suddenly looked much darker.
By the next morning, investigators traced more than $900,000 through Cascade Consulting over eighteen months.
Not all from Mercer Development.
Some came from personal accounts.
Some from vendors.
Some from Lauren.
And one payment came from my mother-in-law.
Patricia stared at the screen.
“Why would I send seventy-five thousand dollars to this company?”
Thomas opened the date.
Her face changed.
“That was the month Harold died.”
She stood.
“What was the payment labeled?”
Thomas swallowed.
“Estate consulting.”
Patricia had never authorized estate consulting.
Somebody had moved money during the chaos after her husband’s death.
That somebody had access to family accounts.
Ryan.
Patricia covered her mouth.
“He started this before Harold was even buried.”
Then her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
A male voice spoke.
“Mrs. Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“This is Victor Shaw.”
Every person in the room went still.
May you like
He said five words.
“We need to discuss Ryan.”
