Chapter 9 - THE CONDO BIANCA DIDN’T KNOW SHE OWNED
Bianca returned the next morning with two attorneys.
She looked furious.
Not glamorous.
Not smug.
Furious.
“I have never been inside that condo.”
Garrett wasn’t present.
The board had suspended him from the building pending review.
Bianca continued.
“I didn’t buy it.”
Caroline placed the deed in front of her.
“Your name is connected through the beneficial ownership filing.”
“I don’t care what the filing says.”
Her attorney examined it.
Then whispered something.
Bianca’s face changed.
“What?”
He pointed.
The signature authorizing the ownership trust had supposedly been hers.
She stared at it.
“That isn’t my signature.”
I almost laughed at the symmetry.
Garrett had tried using my signature to remove me.
Now he had apparently used Bianca’s to hide property.
For the first time, she looked at me with something close to understanding.
“I thought he was protecting me.”
“I know.”
That surprised her.
“You know?”
“I thought the same thing once.”
I did not forgive her.
I did not like her.
But recognizing a pattern did not require affection.
Garrett needed women close enough to trust him and distant enough from the paperwork not to question him.
The condo had cost $6.8 million.
Payments came through Briar Holdings and another account funded partly with corporate money.
Garrett apparently intended to treat the property as Bianca’s after the divorce.
But the trust documents gave him complete control.
Bianca owned nothing meaningful.
She was camouflage.
Her face turned hard.
“He told me we would marry.”
The words hung between us.
Seven years of marriage.
Months of affair.
And apparently Garrett had built identical promises out of different materials.
“He said after the IPO,” she continued.
“He said once you were bought out, everything would be clean.”
I said nothing.
Bianca looked down.
“I believed him.”
“Believing him wasn’t your only mistake.”
“I know.”
Good.
I wasn’t interested in rewriting her as another victim.
She knew he was married.
She sat in my chair.
She helped humiliate me.
But she also wasn’t responsible for crimes she hadn’t committed.
That distinction mattered.
Bianca agreed to provide full access to her personal emails and devices.
By afternoon, forensic investigators discovered Garrett had sent her hundreds of messages about company matters.
One thread mentioned the dilution plan directly.
Bianca wrote:
Are you sure Rosalie agreed?
Garrett replied:
She’ll agree when she understands she has no alternative.
That mattered.
It contradicted his claim that I had already consented.
Another message was worse.
Bianca asked:
What if Northbridge objects?
Garrett replied:
Northbridge won’t. Their board is old money and asleep.
I almost smiled.
He had never bothered learning who sat on Northbridge’s investment committee.
Me.
Then came the real surprise.
Three weeks earlier, Garrett had messaged Bianca:
Once the IPO documents are filed, I’m changing the lender before Rosalie’s family figures out what she still controls.
He knew there was a family connection.
He simply thought I didn’t know how to use it.
My phone rang.
Christopher.
“Rosalie, we found something on our side.”
“What?”
“Garrett submitted a second Blue Horizon term sheet.”
I stood.
“When?”
“Eight days ago.”
“Through Meridian?”
“Yes.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
Christopher continued.
“He attached West’s proprietary models.”
Corporate theft again.
But then he said:
“There’s something else you need to see.”
The second term sheet named Robert Vale as infrastructure partner.
And it included an agreement to sell him West Atlantic after Blue Horizon closed.
May you like
Garrett hadn’t planned to bankrupt the subsidiary later.
He had already promised it away.
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