Chapter 2 - The Guards Were Not Brendan’s Employees
Brendan recovered first.
He pushed broken glass away from his jacket and tried to stand.
“Get them out of my house.”
None of the three guards moved.
His expression hardened.
“I said get out.”
The senior officer looked toward me instead.
That was the moment Diane understood something was wrong.
“Why are they looking at her?”
I removed the filthy rag from my shoulder.
“Because they don’t work for Brendan.”
Jessica, still gripping the edge of the damaged table, laughed nervously.
“Oh, please. What is this, some pathetic intimidation stunt?”
I ignored her.
The senior officer handed me a sealed leather document wallet.
Brendan recognized the embossed emblem immediately.
Northstar Meridian Holdings.
His company had spent the last six months negotiating with Northstar.
Not as a partner.
As a creditor.
Brendan’s luxury-development empire had borrowed heavily during an aggressive expansion into resort properties. When three developments stalled simultaneously, the company breached several loan covenants.
Northstar purchased a major block of that distressed debt.
Brendan had been told the buyer was an institutional fund represented by outside counsel.
That was true.
What nobody in his family knew was who had founded the fund.
I opened the leather wallet.
Diane whispered:
“Cassidy?”
I looked directly at Brendan.
“My firm.”
His face changed again.
Not disbelief this time.
Memory.
Because seven years earlier, before I became Cassidy Vale-Hartman, before I married into his family, before Diane introduced me at charity dinners as “Brendan’s quiet little wife”—
my name had been attached to a very different world.
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And Brendan had never bothered learning enough about it.
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