Married a billionaire to spite my ex 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 18

“That’s not mine,” I said.Grant raised an eyebrow. “It’s your name.”“It’s my name and almost my handwriting.” I pulled the tablet closer and enlarged the signature until the ink swelled. “I cross both Ls with one stroke. Mrs. Doyle drilled it into me at Harden House, because she said a tidy name gets taken seriously. Look. Two separate lines. Somebody copied the shape and missed the habit.”“That helps us,” Lex said. “It doesn’t prove forgery in court.”“It helps me.”He didn’t argue. He turned to Grant. “What can you verify?”Grant answered in the flat, careful voice of a man who’d been burned by guessing. “The filer was a registered agent on Water Street. The notary stamp is a Queens commission that lapsed four years ago. Delaware doesn’t require the company to list who owns it, only who signed the paperwork.”“So we know who signed,” I said. “We don’t know who benefits.”“Correct.” Grant’s mouth twitched. “You’d be a terrible lawyer, Miss Roswell. You skip the billing.”Lex nearl

“Who’s the notary?” I asked, before the doors finished opening.Grant stepped out with a tablet under his arm and a visitor badge in his other hand, the plastic kind with a printed name. He took one look at Lex’s face and stopped.“I went down to pull the lobby log,” he said. “What happened?”I held out the last page. “Somebody swore to being me at four-fifty. Read it.”He read it. The corridor light hummed. Lex stood a step behind me, not crowding, just there.“Daniel Voss, Notary Public,” Grant said slowly. “Suite 1904.” He started typing. “Nineteen is multi-tenant. Pierce’s firm has 1902. Nineteen-oh-four is Meridian Business Services. They rent mailboxes, conference rooms, and a notary by the hour.”“So it’s not Pierce’s office,” I said.“It’s not Pierce’s door,” Lex said. “Doesn’t mean he’s clear.”“It means we say what we know.” I pointed at the tablet. “Did Meridian book a visitor pass today?”Grant scrolled. His mouth went flat. “4:41 p.m. A pass issued to L. Roswell for Suite

“A notary keeps a journal,” I said.Grant looked up. Lex, still at the window, turned his head.“Every signature, every ID, every person who walks in. I sat through one of Ryan’s loan closings and watched the notary log it all in a bound book. Two minutes of writing for every ten seconds of stamping.” I pushed away from the glass. “If the Queens notary logged my license on a Tuesday, she wrote down who put it in front of her.”“The Marlowe filing lists her as Odessa Platt,” Grant said, already typing. “Commission lapsed four years ago. Seventy-one. Lives in Jamaica.”“Then she still has the book. Notaries are supposed to keep them.”“Supposed to,” Lex said. “I’ll have counsel send a records request in the morning.”“She’ll shut the door on a lawyer.” I said it gently, because I’d already tried the argument in my head and lost it to myself. “A woman who kept her books for seven years after retiring is a woman who doesn’t trust men with letterhead.”“And if someone else got to her first

“We go to Hale today,” I said. “Before anyone tells him we’ve been in Queens.”Lex didn’t look up from his desk. “Lilly, a lawyer’s grief is not a loophole. He’ll call his bar association before he answers a question.”“He’ll answer me before he thinks of the bar association.” I picked up the letter. “Nobody warned him about Mrs. Platt. Right now, he’s a man whose sister’s name sits in a book he doesn’t know exists. In a week he’ll be a man with a lawyer.”“And if he’s part of it?”“Then I want to watch his face when I say her name.”He studied me, then closed the folder. “Grant will drive. I’ll sit where you tell me.”“By the door. Looking bored.”“I excel at that.”Hale and Winter occupied two rooms above a tax-prep shop in Jamaica, with a cardboard sign taped to the glass door. Corbin Hale opened it himself. He was around forty, slight, with the same narrow jaw Mrs. Platt had mentioned, and the tired politeness of a man who billed by the quarter-hour and rarely got paid on time.“M