Chapter 4 - SAVANNAH HAD RECORDED ADAM BEFORE THE AFFAIR
Bernice arrived an hour later.
She walked through Elise’s front door, saw Adam, and immediately looked disappointed.
Not surprised.
Disappointed.
That told me everything about what she already knew.
“Give me Nell,” she said.
I hesitated.
Then handed her the baby.
Bernice washed her hands first without being asked.
Adam noticed.
His own mother had remembered something he had forgotten twenty minutes earlier.
Then she sat.
“Savannah approached me six months ago.”
“Why?” Adam asked.
“She had audio from your company retreat.”
Adam’s face changed.
I had heard about that retreat.
Three-day leadership event.
He came home irritated and said senior management had spent half the time drinking.
“What recording?”
Bernice took out her phone.
She had saved a copy.
Adam’s voice filled the room.
He sounded drunk.
Not incoherent.
Careless.
A male colleague asked:
“You really going home to another round of baby planning?”
Adam laughed.
Then:
“I love Marina, but sometimes I feel like I’m disappearing into the life she wants.”
My stomach tightened.
Then another voice:
“So leave.”
Adam:
“I’d lose half my life.”
Then laughter.
Then:
“Sometimes I wish I had one year where nobody needed anything from me.”
The recording ended.
I looked at Adam.
He looked sick.
“That was before Nell was conceived?”
Bernice nodded.
Eight months before.
Not career-destroying.
Ugly.
Potentially humiliating.
But not blackmail material by itself.
Adam said:
“Why would Savannah think that destroys my career?”
Bernice continued.
Because another section involved confidential client information.
Adam had mentioned an acquisition his firm had not announced.
While drunk.
Savannah happened to be helping with the retreat event.
She recorded the conversation after realizing what she had heard.
“She threatened you?” I asked.
Bernice shook her head.
“No.”
“She said she was afraid somebody else had a copy.”
That changed things.
Savannah claimed an unknown person emailed her asking for the audio.
She came to Bernice because Bernice had been an attorney before retirement.
Bernice paid to secure the original files and investigate.
In exchange, she took twenty percent of Sable North when Savannah needed startup capital.
“So she didn’t blackmail you,” I said.
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell Adam?”
“I wanted to know who else had the recording.”
Adam laughed bitterly.
“So everybody protects me with secrets.”
Bernice flinched.
Then I asked:
“Who had the other copy?”
Her expression changed.
“We never found out.”
Then Adam looked at her.
“Did Savannah use the recording to get close to me?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned pale.
For the first time, he seemed to consider that his affair might not have begun the way he believed.
But Bernice immediately corrected him.
“Do not use that possibility to excuse what you chose later.”
Good.
Adam nodded.
Then Bernice handed me another file.
“I brought this for you.”
“What?”
Savannah’s investor agreement.
Adam’s twenty percent interest had a strange clause.
If Adam left Sable North before December 31, his equity reverted to Savannah for one dollar.
If he remained past January 1, his share vested permanently.
I looked at Adam.
“When is your firm deciding whether to contract with Sable North?”
He went still.
“January.”
There it was.
Adam had invested in and slept with the owner of a company positioned to receive business from his employer.
That was not merely adultery.
May you like
It was a conflict he had never disclosed.
And someone had started collecting evidence before I even gave birth.
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