Garrett’s voice filled Harrison’s office, and for one impossible second I was back in my kitchen, hidden behind the stairwell, listening to my husband speak about my life as if it were an account he intended to empty.
But this recording was older.
It had been made before David died.
There was static first.
A scrape.
Then David’s voice, low and controlled.
“Say it again.”
Garrett answered.
“You need to stop digging into things that don’t concern you.”
My fingers locked around the arms of the chair.
Harrison said nothing.
David’s voice came again.
“Money moving through a company attached to my wife’s sister concerns me.
Calls between you and Sienna concern me.
You showing up around Eliza while pretending you barely know our family concerns me.”
Garrett gave a short laugh.
It was the same laugh I had heard in my kitchen.
“You think Eliza will believe you?”
“I don’t need her to believe me yet.
I need records.”
“Then get your records.”
There was a pause long enough that I could hear David breathing.
Then Garrett said, “Just remember that people make their lives very difficult when they refuse to leave things alone.”
The file ended.
I stared at the phone.
“That’s it?”
“That’s the first recording,” Harrison said.
He swiped to another file.
The date was four days later.
David had apparently begun recording every interaction he considered suspicious.
In the next clip, Sienna’s voice was audible.
She sounded exhausted.
“I told you I can’t keep doing this.”
Garrett replied, “Then pay what you owe.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Exactly.”
I closed my eyes.
The shell company my mother had mentioned wasn’t simply connected to Sienna’s debts.
Garrett had been using those debts as leverage over her.
Harrison handed me a folder.
Bank transfers ran through companies whose names meant nothing to me, but the pattern was clear once he traced it with his finger.
Money had entered accounts connected to Sienna.
Portions moved almost immediately into an entity Garrett controlled through layers of paperwork.
“Your mother found these after David died,” Harrison said.
“David found the beginning of them before the crash.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because she didn’t know who was involved or how far it went.
And you had just buried your husband.
Then Garrett appeared in your life.”
The sentence hurt more than I expected.
Appeared.
I thought about the first coffee he’d brought me, the sympathetic tilt of his head, the way he seemed to know exactly which words would make me feel less alone.
You don’t have to be strong every minute.
He had studied my grief and stepped into it.
Harrison opened another file.
“This is the recording from Margaret’s study.”
