**Part 2: The Investigation**
The drive home was a blackout. I have a fragmented memory of a red stoplight glaring at me on Providence Road, and a country radio station whining something about a fiddle. I remember pulling into my driveway, killing the engine, and sitting in the suffocating darkness of the garage. The elaborate floral arrangements were still buckling in the backseat.
The house was eerily silent and dark. Thatcher was still playing out his charade at the hotel.
I unlocked the front door, the silence pressing against my eardrums, and walked straight into his home office. Let me be perfectly clear: I was never the kind of woman who snooped. I had never scoured a text log or checked a browser history. What I engaged in over the next hour was not fueled by petty jealousy or manic paranoia. It was the icy, methodical excavation of a woman who already understood the devastating truth, and was simply hunting for the shrapnel she needed to survive the blast.
Thatcher’s desk was immaculate. He was a man defined by his precision. Everything was sequestered into neatly labeled, color-coded folders. His handwriting was as sharp and uncompromising as a contract clause. Ironically, it was one of the traits I had once found so grounding about him.
I bypassed the decoy drawers and opened the heavy bottom filing cabinet. Nestled in the back was a thick folder labeled simply: Bloom Restructuring.
I dragged it onto the leather blotter, switched on the brass desk lamp, and opened it.
The first document felt heavy, like lead. It was a Partnership Dissolution Agreement, backdated six weeks prior. The clauses were dense, but the conclusion was violently simple: it listed Claudine as the sole, undisputed remaining owner of Bloom & Co. upon execution. My breath hitched. At the bottom of the final page, stark against the white paper, was my signature. Or, rather, a masterful counterfeit of it. The ink was slightly too even, lacking my usual rushed flourish—the hallmark of a signature someone had meticulously practiced on scratch paper before committing to the forgery.
A tremor started in my hands as I flipped to the second document. It was a formal Letter of Intent from Pinnacle Events Group, a predatory corporate floral conglomerate operating out of Atlanta. They were offering a staggering $1.8 million for the full, hostile acquisition of my company. The letter was addressed exclusively to Claudine. The closing date was a mere forty-five days away.
But it was the third document that made the blood freeze in my veins.
It was a printed, multi-page email thread. I read the text. Then I rubbed my eyes, feeling a sick vertigo wash over me, and read it again.
Claudine to Thatcher (11 weeks earlier):
She’s getting more unstable every week. The Harrington client called me directly again today because she missed another callback. This is working flawlessly. How much longer do we need?
Thatcher to Claudine:
Six more weeks. Keep quietly redirecting the premium accounts to your private line. If she misses two more major client touchpoints, I can legally trigger the competency review under the boilerplate of the partnership agreement. Once that’s triggered, she doesn’t even need to sign anything. The dissolution goes through automatically due to medical incapacitation.
Claudine to Thatcher:
What about the morning routine?
Thatcher to Claudine:
Still going. She genuinely thinks it’s her baseline anxiety flaring up. She’s not going to figure it out.
I read those last two lines until the letters blurred into meaningless shapes. The morning routine.
