Chapter 2 - ANDREW DIDN’T ASK ABOUT THE UNDERWEAR
“What are you doing here?” Brenda shouted.
Her blouse was buttoned incorrectly.
Her mascara was smeared.
People stared.
I kept my voice level.
“Andrew asked the hospital to call me.”
Her face changed.
“What?”
Before she could say more, a nurse approached.
“Mrs. Keller, please lower your voice.”
Brenda pointed at me.
“She has no business here.”
Then a man’s voice came from behind us.
“She has every reason to be here.”
We turned.
Andrew’s older brother, Michael, stood beside a wheelchair.
Andrew sat in it.
Pale.
Exhausted.
Alive.
Relief surprised me.
Brenda rushed toward him.
“Andrew, what are you doing out here?”
He ignored her.
His eyes found mine.
“You sent it?”
I nodded.
He didn’t ask what.
Brenda knew.
Andrew said quietly:
“Thank you.”
Brenda’s face twisted.
Then she looked at me.
“You had no right.”
I almost laughed.
“No right to tell your husband?”
“You don’t know anything.”
Andrew spoke.
“She knows enough.”
The nurse intervened and reminded him he needed to return to his room.
Before they wheeled him away, Andrew looked at me.
“My accountant is bringing something.”
“What?”
“Stay.”
Brenda stepped forward.
“What accountant?”
Andrew finally looked at his wife.
“The one you didn’t know I hired.”
For the first time since I entered the hospital, Brenda stopped talking.
---
At 10:40 a.m., a courier arrived carrying a thick brown envelope.
Andrew’s name was written across the front.
He opened it in his hospital room with Michael, me, and an attorney named Susan Hale present.
Brenda had been asked to leave after another argument.
Andrew handed me the first stack.
Bank statements.
“Look at the deposits.”
I did.
Recurring transfers.
$8,000.
$12,500.
$9,750.
$16,000.
Source:
MRC Land Development.
My husband’s company.
I frowned.
“What is this account?”
“Mine and Brenda’s joint savings account.”
I looked at Andrew.
“She told me these were bonuses.”
Mark had never paid his secretary bonuses like that.
At least, not through ordinary payroll.
Andrew continued:
“I started checking after she claimed she received a $38,000 year-end bonus last year.”
He handed me another sheet.
The transfer did not originate from payroll.
It came from an entity I had never heard of.
M&B Property Strategies LLC.
M.
And B.
Mark.
Brenda.
My mouth went dry.
Andrew said:
“I found the company registration yesterday.”
“Who owns it?”
“Brenda owns forty-nine percent.”
“And the rest?”
He slid the page toward me.
Mark Reynolds — 51%.
My husband and his secretary did not merely have an affair.
They had a company together.
May you like
And it had existed for four years.
---
