Chapter 4 - The First Signature Was Forged
Marcus told Jessica not to go home.
He also told her not to go to the office alone.
By nine fifteen, she was sitting in a private conference room inside an airport hotel with Marcus, Anna, and two digital-forensics consultants Marcus had called before leaving his own breakfast table.
Daniel was no longer with them.
The moment airport police asked whether Jessica wanted to file a report about him grabbing her arm, Daniel walked away after being told not to leave the metropolitan area.
Jessica watched him disappear into a taxi.
It felt absurd.
For twelve years, she had known the shape of his shoulders from every distance.
Now she did not know the man inside them.
Marcus spread the photographed documents across a large monitor.
“First problem,” he said, “your signature is forged.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean the first signature in the chain is forged.”
Jessica leaned closer.
Marcus highlighted a board consent dated six weeks earlier.
Jessica remembered the date because she had spent that entire day in Richmond with Emilee for a school science competition.
The consent supposedly authorized Daniel to negotiate a temporary financing arrangement using Jessica’s shares.
“Who circulated this?” Jessica asked.
“Nora.”
The name hurt differently now.
Daniel’s betrayal was violent and immediate.
Nora’s felt surgical.
Jessica and Nora had met their freshman year of college when Jessica locked herself out of a dorm room wearing pajama pants and one shoe.
Nora had sat with her in the hallway for two hours.
She had been in Jessica’s wedding.
She had held newborn Emilee before Daniel’s own mother arrived at the hospital.
When Carter & Bloom nearly failed during its first expansion, Nora had left a safer job to help Jessica rescue it.
Jessica had trusted her with everything.
Apparently, including the knife.
Anna sat across from them with her arms wrapped around herself.
“I need to tell you something.”
Jessica looked up.
Anna’s face was drained.
“Daniel asked me to sign documents last week.”
Marcus immediately turned toward her.
“What kind?”
“He said they were travel forms.”
“Do you have copies?”
Anna unlocked her phone and searched.
“He sent them through a signing app.”
Marcus leaned beside her.
The first document was a travel disclosure.
The second was not.
It was an acknowledgment that Anna Reed had received consulting fees from Northstar Meridian Holdings.
Anna stared at the screen.
“I never worked for them.”
The amount listed was $184,000.
Jessica’s anger sharpened.
“You received that money?”
“No.”
Marcus asked Anna to open her bank app.
She did.
No deposit.
No transfer.
Nothing.
“That document creates a paper trail,” he said quietly. “If the company theft gets discovered, it suggests Anna received part of the proceeds.”
Anna went pale.
“He was setting me up.”
Jessica looked at Daniel’s empty chair.
Not just a mistress.
A scapegoat.
Suddenly, Anna’s role in Daniel’s plan made cruel sense.
He had chosen a woman who lived in another state, worked independently as a marketing consultant, traveled often, and had no connection to Jessica’s company.
Someone easy to describe as an outside conspirator.
Someone easy to abandon.
Jessica should have hated Anna.
A part of her still hated the image of Daniel kissing her beneath the airport arrival signs.
But hatred became harder when the other woman had been lied to with almost the same precision.
Marcus’s forensic consultant, Priya, looked up from her laptop.
“I found something.”
She had reviewed the metadata from the document Anna signed.
“It was created on a Carter & Bloom corporate computer.”
Jessica leaned forward.
“Which one?”
“The creator tag is NBlake-CFO-02.”
No one spoke.
Nora’s machine.
Anna covered her mouth.
Jessica felt a cold certainty settle inside her.
Nora was not being used.
She was involved.
Marcus’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, then handed it to Jessica.
“It’s the bank fraud department.”
Jessica pressed the phone to her ear.
The investigator identified himself and asked three security questions.
Then he said, “Mrs. Carter, we stopped the wire before settlement.”
Jessica exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours.
“But there’s another problem.”
Of course there was.
“The same authorization packet was used yesterday at another institution.”
Jessica sat straighter.
“For what?”
“A secured line of credit.”
“How much?”
“Seven million dollars.”
Anna whispered, “Oh my God.”
The investigator continued.
“The loan has already funded.”
Jessica’s hand went numb.
“Where did the money go?”
“We’re tracing it. But the initial disbursement was sent to three accounts.”
“Whose?”
He gave her the first name.
Northstar Meridian Holdings.
The second belonged to a law office Jessica had never heard of.
Then he gave her the third.
Jessica stopped breathing.
It was an account in the name of the Emilee Carter Family Trust.
Her daughter’s trust.
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Daniel had not only used Jessica’s name.
He had used Emilee’s too.
