Chapter 7 - HE HAD PLANNED FOR MY MONEY
The next page made my hands cold.
I had inherited Bennett Medical Supply when my father died four years earlier.
I did not run the company.
A management team did.
But my shares were mine.
Separate property.
Protected by the prenup David had eagerly signed before our wedding because, at the time, he had been certain he would always be wealthier than me.
Life had changed.
Bennett Medical had developed a hospital logistics platform that made my shares worth far more than either of us expected.
David knew that.
Apparently, he had planned around it.
Natalie had found a draft amendment connecting one of my trusts to Michael’s.
It required my signature.
A signature already appeared at the bottom.
Mine.
Again.
I projected it.
David stopped pretending.
“Turn it off.”
“No.”
“Claire, turn the damn projector off.”
Richard stepped between us.
“You don’t give her orders tonight.”
David looked at his father.
For the first time, real anger broke through.
“You don’t know what I’ve been fixing for this family.”
Richard laughed bitterly.
“Stealing isn’t fixing.”
Martha stood.
“He wasn’t stealing.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Her mistake registered immediately.
I narrowed my eyes.
“You knew about this too?”
“No, I meant—”
“Mom,” David warned.
But Rebecca was already moving toward the projector.
She read the date on the trust amendment.
Then looked at Martha.
“This was prepared the week Claire’s father died.”
My chest tightened.
I had spent that week barely functioning.
David had handled everything.
The funeral.
The lawyers.
The mail.
He had been perfect.
Everyone said so.
What a husband.
What a man.
Now I understood why.
While I was grieving, he had been collecting access.
I looked at him.
“You were moving documents while I buried my father.”
His expression flickered.
“I was planning our future.”
“No. You were planning yours.”
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was my attorney, Samuel Price.
He had one question.
CLAIRE, DID DAVID EVER HAVE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR YOU?
I started typing no.
Then stopped.
Because suddenly I remembered the hospital paperwork after my car accident three years earlier.
David had brought documents to my recovery room.
I had signed several without reading them carefully.
May you like
And if one of those pages was what I now feared it was, David had not merely been planning to steal from my future.
He might already have been controlling my present.
