The words tightened her throat.
Walter Whitaker had died four years earlier, after an illness that kept him away from his business for months.
During his last days, Jenna had visited him every afternoon.
Once, while she was telling him how happy she was with Grant, Walter had taken her hand.
“Real love doesn’t need you to give up the ability to walk away, sweetheart.”
“Never hand anyone the keys to your freedom.”
Jenna had dismissed it as needless worry.
Now she knew her father had understood something she had refused to see.
At 9:00, Grant walked into the kitchen in one of his Italian suits.
“I hope you’re ready.”
“We have an appointment at the attorney’s office at 11:00.”
Jenna was feeding Josie her breakfast.
“I’m not going.”
He stopped.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not signing any document without reviewing it with my own attorney.”
Grant let out an incredulous laugh.
“Your attorney? And what exactly are you going to pay her with?”
“That shouldn’t worry you.”
His expression changed.
“Jenna, I’d advise you not to start this nonsense.”
“And I’d advise you never to use our daughter to threaten me again.”
Grant stepped up to the table.
“Be very careful.”
“If we keep going like this, I might have to ask for custody of Josie.”
“At least with me she’d have financial stability.”
Jenna felt a pang of fear.
Not because she believed he was right, but because he had just confirmed her attorney’s suspicions.
“You call refusing to buy her diapers financial stability?”
Grant pressed his lips together.
“Don’t twist things.”
Then his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen and answered impatiently.
“What is it, Preston?”
Jenna watched the color slowly drain from his face.
“What do you mean they’ve opened an extraordinary review?”
He listened for several seconds.
“They can’t do that now!”
“We have payments due Friday.”
Another pause.
“What irregular documentation?”
Grant looked at his wife.
Jenna went on feeding Josie.
When the call ended, he set the phone on the table.
“Do you know anything about this?”
“About what?”
“The lender is questioning our guarantees.”
“And they’ve requested paperwork on some real estate companies.”
Jenna gently wiped her daughter’s mouth.
“Maybe you should ask whoever prepared those guarantees.”
Grant didn’t move.
For the first time since she’d known him, he had no answer ready.
Midmorning, Barbara showed up at the house without warning.
She marched straight into the living room.
“Jenna! I want to talk to you!”
Grant was sitting at the computer, going through emails that kept pouring in.
Barbara held her phone in her hand.
“Our advisor just called me.”
“He says they’ve started reviewing the company’s transactions. What have you done?”
Jenna came out of the bedroom with Josie in her arms.
“I’ve asked for some documents bearing my signature to be verified.”
Barbara went pale.
“What documents?”
“An authorization over assets that belong to my estate.”
The older woman looked at her son at once.
It was quick, almost imperceptible.
But Jenna saw it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Barbara said.
“Then you won’t mind explaining it to the attorneys.”
Grant stood up abruptly.
“That’s enough!”
“This conversation is over.”
Jenna studied him with a calm that seemed to unsettle him.
“No, Grant.”
“This conversation has just begun.”
She set Josie in her playpen and laid a folder of copies on the table.
Grant recognized the first page immediately.
“Where did you get this?”
“From my legal representatives.”
Barbara leaned in to examine the pages.
“This must be some administrative misunderstanding.”
“The signature is dated February 18,” Jenna said.
“That day I was in the hospital.”
“I have the medical report and the admission records.”
The silence was total.
Grant looked at his mother.
“Mom…”
Barbara lowered her eyes.
“I only wanted to help.”
The unexpected confession sent a chill through Jenna.
“Help whom?”
Barbara sank onto the sofa.
“The company needed financing.”
“The banks were making things difficult, and we had to act fast.”
Grant ran his hands through his hair.
“You didn’t have to say anything.”
Jenna turned to him.
“So you knew.”
He didn’t answer.
And that silence hurt far more than any insult.
Over the following days, Jenna discovered just how much her marriage had become a performance.
With the help of her attorney, Renee Alvarez, she reviewed the bank activity and the communications lawfully obtained regarding her estate.
Holloway Construction had grown for years on loans and ever-riskier real estate deals.
When several projects fell behind, Grant turned to new lines of credit.
Then construction costs rose.
Later, two developments came to a near standstill.
The company still looked prosperous, but behind its glass offices and luxury vehicles, unpaid invoices were piling up.
Barbara knew about the situation.
She also knew Jenna held significant family assets, though not how large they truly were.
She had found partial information when she came across some of Walter’s estate papers while helping organize the home office.
From then on, mother and son had begun to talk about Jenna’s fortune as if it were a solution made available for their own problems.
Grant had tried to persuade her to sell an inherited property in Manhattan.
She refused.
Then he proposed investing in a residential development.
Jenna declined that too.
She didn’t distrust her husband yet, but she remembered her father’s advice to keep family investments separate.
That caution eventually became an obstacle for Grant.
And that was when the real deterioration began.
First came the comments about her spending.
Then the criticism of how she raised Josie.
Later, Barbara began hinting that Jenna wasn’t emotionally fit to care for the child.
It was all part of a steady pressure campaign to make her give in.
Renee found a message in which Grant asked a law firm what chance he would have of getting custody orders if he could show that his wife was financially dependent on him.
Jenna read the sentence several times.
Financially dependent on him.
That man had deliberately cut off access to the money meant to buy his daughter’s food, in order to create the image of a mother who couldn’t support herself.
It was calculated cruelty.
And yet Jenna still found the strength to do something Grant would never have done for her.
She asked Sinclair to study how to keep the employees of Holloway Construction from paying for the decisions of its owners.
“There are over eighty families depending on those paychecks,” she explained.
“I don’t want them losing their peace of mind because of our marriage.”
Sinclair and the financial team prepared a proposal to keep the company viable, conditioned on independent oversight and Grant’s removal from certain management duties.
