Chapter 13 - THE AFFAIR BEFORE THE WEDDING
Lauren had known Matthew for eight years.
Not three.
They met while he and I were still living in Queens.
Lauren worked as an assistant at the venture firm where Matthew made his first unsuccessful pitch.
She corrected the financial projections before the meeting.
Matthew invited her to dinner afterward.
Their affair began two weeks later.
Six months before our wedding.
Lauren admitted everything during her second interview with prosecutors.
She had watched me help Matthew build NexusCore.
She had watched him accept my money.
She had watched him marry me.
And she remained with him because he promised the marriage was temporary.
“He said he needed the Sterling name.”
Lauren sat behind the glass partition of an interview room.
Daniel slept in a chair beside her.
“He said once the company became valuable enough, he would leave you.”
“You believed that for eight years?”
“I wanted to.”
“Did you attend our wedding?”
She looked down.
“I stood outside the church.”
The memory made me physically ill.
Matthew had cried when I walked down the aisle.
I believed those tears meant love.
Perhaps they meant victory.
“Why carve your initial into his ring?”
“He did it.”
“When?”
“The night before the wedding.”
My mother turned away.
Even Detective Ortiz looked disgusted.
Lauren continued.
“Matthew said every time he looked at the ring, he would remember who he truly belonged to.”
I almost laughed.
Matthew belonged only to himself.
Everyone else had simply been assigned a role.
Wife.
Mistress.
Investor.
Employee.
Father.
Each person existed to protect the version of Matthew he wanted the world to see.
“Why did he wait seven years to leave me?”
“Because the trust documents never disappeared.”
Lauren wiped her eyes.
“He needed your continued legal connection to the company.”
“So he could use the technology.”
“And the foundation.”
“Did he plan to kill me?”
She hesitated.
“Lauren.”
“He discussed accidents.”
My father’s chair scraped against the floor.
“What kind of accidents?”
“A fall from the terrace.”
“A medication overdose.”
“A car crash.”
My skin turned cold.
“He never followed through because you were more valuable alive.”
Lauren’s voice shook.
“Until Project Janus became profitable enough to replace the legitimate company.”
Then the attack in the penthouse had not been a sudden loss of control.
Matthew wanted to establish a public history of instability.
He wanted me hospitalized.
Declared incompetent.
Perhaps dead later.
Every strike had been part rage.
Part performance.
He had beaten me to impress Lauren.
But he had also been creating the final evidence for his lie.
The district attorney entered the room with another file.
“We received the forensic report from Mrs. Hayes’s penthouse.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
“The cane contains blood from the victim.”
No one reacted.
We already knew.
“It also contains partial fingerprints from Lauren Thorne.”
Lauren went pale.
“I never touched it.”
“The prints are beneath the most recent layer of polish.”
“That is impossible.”
I remembered the wedding.
Matthew’s grandfather had handed the cane to Lauren before the ceremony.
She had been disguised as a catering employee.
She carried the family treasure into the reception hall.
The photographer had captured her in the background of one image.
Lauren closed her eyes.
“I moved it once.”
“When?”
“The night before your wedding.”
A terrible understanding settled over me.
“Did Matthew tell you why his grandfather gave us that cane?”
“He said it was a symbol.”
“Of what?”
“Discipline.”
My father stood.
Lauren began shaking.
“His grandfather used it on Matthew when he was a child.”
Silence filled the room.
The revelation explained something.
It excused nothing.
Pain had been handed through the Hayes family like an inheritance.
Matthew had once been the child beneath the cane.
Then he grew into the man holding it.
The prosecutor opened a second file.
“There is more.”
He showed us a restored message recovered from Lauren’s old phone.
It had been sent by Matthew on our wedding night.
ONE DAY, I WILL MAKE HER KNEEL WITH THE SAME CANE.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
May you like
The attack had not begun at 11:17 p.m.
It had begun before I ever said, “I do.”
