CHAPTER 7: THE HUSBAND WHO KNOWS

"How long have you been standing there?"

Gideon didn't answer. He crossed the study in three slow steps, his eyes dropping to the open folder on the desk in front of me, my father's letter still visible inside it.

I closed it before he reached me, my hand moving faster than my thoughts could catch up to.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked, his voice even, a question with no heat behind it yet.

"Looking for the restructuring papers." I kept my hands flat on the desk, steady, though my pulse was anything but. "You said you left them for me."

"Those are on the kitchen counter. You know that." He studied my face the way he might study a contract with a clause he didn't trust. "Why are you going through my father in law's old files, Elise?"

"They're my father's files," I said. "In my house. In my study."

"That's not what I asked."

I made myself hold his gaze instead of looking away. Looking away was what a guilty woman did. A woman with nothing to hide looked tired, a little annoyed at being questioned in her own home.

"Fine." I let a note of irritation creep into my voice, the kind a wife allows herself when she's tired of being cross-examined in her own study. "I was looking for something of his," I said. "A photograph. I've been thinking about him a lot this week."

Gideon's eyes flicked to the closed folder, then back to me.

"You've never gone through his things before. Not once in five years."

"Maybe I should have." I let my voice soften, let a little grief bleed into it, the kind he would recognize because he'd watched me grieve my father plenty of times before. "Is that a crime now, missing him?"

Something in his posture eased, though his eyes stayed careful.

"Of course not." He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my face, the same gesture he used whenever he wanted to close a conversation without finishing it. "I've taken care of everything since he died, Elise. The company, the estate, you. You've never had to worry about any of it. I don't understand why that's changing now."

"It's not changing," I said. "I trust you. I've always trusted you."

His hand paused against my cheek.

"I know you do," he said, and something in his voice loosened, relief settling into the space where suspicion had been. "I worry, that's all. You've seemed distant this week. Distracted."

"Grief does that," I said. "You of all people should understand."

He nodded, and I watched the last of his guard come down, watched him decide the woman in front of him was still the one he'd built his entire plan around, trusting and unaware.

"You should have come to me," he said, "instead of digging through boxes alone at night. If you want to talk about your father, we can talk about him. Together."

The suggestion chilled me more than any accusation could have. The last thing I wanted was Gideon anywhere near the rest of what those files contained.

"I know," I said. "I wasn't ready to talk about it yet. I will be."

"Get some rest," he said, kissing my forehead. "I'll bring the papers to you in the morning."

He left the study without looking back at the desk again.

I sat frozen until I heard his footsteps fade down the hall, then let out a breath I'd been holding since the moment he first appeared in the doorway.

I called Milo from the bathroom twenty minutes later, the water running to cover my voice.

"He caught me in the study with the folder open," I whispered. "I don't think he saw the letter itself, but he knows I was looking through my father's files. He's suspicious now."

"How suspicious?"

"Suspicious enough to ask questions. Not suspicious enough to stop trusting me, I don't think. Not yet. I told him I was looking for a photograph."

"Did he believe you?"

"I don't know. I think so. For now."

"What did he ask, word for word?"

"Why I was going through my father's things after five years of never touching them. Why I seemed interested in the business all at once. I told him grief was catching up to me. He softened after that."

"That's the part that worries me," Milo said. "A man like Gideon doesn't soften unless he's decided the story fits well enough to leave alone for now. That doesn't mean he's stopped watching."

Milo exhaled on the other end. "This changes things, Elise. We can't keep gathering evidence the way we have been, one document at a time, hoping he doesn't notice the gaps. If he's watching you now, he'll catch the next mistake. We need proof he can't destroy or explain away, and we need it before he decides you're more of a threat than an asset."

"What does that mean, in practice?"

"It means everything from here has to be deliberate. No more searching his study at random, hoping we stumble onto the right document. We go after specific accounts, specific transfers, things a court could use, not only things that make you suspicious."

"He wants me to sign the restructuring papers tomorrow."

"Then sign nothing until you've read every line in front of me. And Elise, whatever he says to you tomorrow, whatever he tries to test, keep playing the wife who trusts him. That performance is the only thing standing between you and him seeing how much danger he's in."

I promised him I would.

Gideon found me at the kitchen table the next morning, the manila folder in his hand.

"Sign these, and everything becomes easier," he said, sliding the papers across the table toward me.

I picked up the pen he'd left beside them, turning it over once between my fingers.

I had read every page the night before, memorizing names, account numbers, clauses buried in language designed to look routine. One line, buried on the fourth page, had stopped me cold when I first found it. An account listed among the entities receiving my transferred shares, one I hadn't seen in any of Naomi's documents or Milo's records.

Meridian Holdings Trust.

"Before I sign," I said, keeping my voice light, curious instead of pointed, "what is Meridian Holdings? I don't recognize it from the other entities."

Gideon's expression changed for half a second, so briefly I might have imagined it if I hadn't been watching for that reaction. A flicker of something sharp behind his eyes, gone before it broke the surface.

"It's a minor subsidiary," he said. "Nothing that concerns the signature you're giving me today."

"It's listed as receiving eight percent of the transferred shares. That doesn't sound minor."

"It's structured that way for tax purposes. You wouldn't understand the mechanics without a finance background. Truth is, neither did I until my team explained it to me. That's the point of having a team."

"Then explain the mechanics to me."

"Elise." His voice hardened, a small edge cutting through the charm. "You don't need to understand every entity in a restructuring, this size. That's why you have me."

I set the pen down instead of signing.

"Humor me," I said. "Where did Meridian Holdings come from? I've never heard you mention it before."

Gideon reached across the table and took the papers back before I could stop him, sliding them into the folder with a motion too controlled to be casual.

"Who told you about that account?"

The question landed sharp, stripped of every ounce of warmth he'd used on me the night before.

I kept my face still, though my heart had started slamming against my ribs.

"No one told me anything," I said. "I read it on the page you handed me."

Gideon studied me, his eyes narrowing, searching my face the way a man searches for a crack in something he'd believed was solid.

And I understood, in that moment, that this had stopped being about whether I knew anything.

He already believed I knew something.

Now he was testing how much.