That should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
A week later, Dana and I were sitting in my grandfather’s old study at my mother’s house with a banker’s box open between us when she found the amendment Gregory had spent three years assuming was sentimental clutter. My grandfather’s trust did not hand him authority through marriage. It did not even hand me total authority automatically. It tied control of the voting block to lineal ownership and related-party disclosure. If a project manager used trust funds for undisclosed personal benefit, the beneficiary could trigger immediate review and emergency removal before close of business. Page eleven. Tucked between tax schedules and land descriptions. Dull-looking enough for a vain man to skip. Lethal enough to end him if someone else read it carefully.
He had done more than sleep with Ashley.
He had moved her into an apartment paid through project reimbursements. He had used draft renderings from my old files. He had written an internal memo describing me as emotionally fragile and unlikely to return after maternity leave. Dana got that memo from a paralegal at Gregory’s firm who still believed the profession had rules. By the time I saw it, there was a damp circle from my water glass spreading over the printout while the baby kicked against my ribs.
The line that stayed with me was not the affair language.
