Chapter 2 - The Woman He Married
Nathan caught Rebecca before she reached the outer doors.
He did not touch her.
He simply stepped between her and the exit.
“Give me your phone.”
Rebecca laughed once, breathlessly.
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“You remotely shut down the planetarium.”
“I shut down equipment that could have damaged a child’s hearing.”
“You knew exactly what that program was.”
“I knew Elena was obsessed with codes.”
Nathan looked at Sophie.
She sat on the bottom row of planetarium seats clutching the torn notebook to her chest.
Her cheek was red.
Rebecca followed his gaze.
“I shouldn’t have slapped her.”
“Twice.”
“I lost control.”
“And then you destroyed Elena’s notebook.”
Rebecca lowered her voice.
“She has been mourning a woman who chose not to come back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know more about Elena’s disappearance than you do because I was the person cleaning up the legal disaster she left behind.”
That sentence landed differently now.
Nathan unlocked his phone and called Asterion’s security director.
“Daniel, lock the planetarium network. Nobody touches logs, backups, remote access records, or camera footage.”
Rebecca stiffened.
“Nathan.”
He continued.
“And suspend all administrative credentials except mine until I say otherwise.”
Rebecca stepped closer.
“You cannot do that.”
“It’s my company.”
“Not entirely.”
Nathan looked at her.
Asterion Systems had begun fifteen years earlier as a satellite-imaging startup founded by Nathan and Elena.
Nathan held thirty-eight percent.
Elena still legally owned twenty-four percent, though her voting rights had been temporarily administered by a court-appointed conservator after she disappeared.
The remaining shares belonged to employees, investors, and the Hale Family Investment Trust created by Nathan’s late father.
Rebecca had spent the last two years restructuring governance.
Nathan had barely questioned it.
He suddenly wondered why.
Rebecca folded her arms.
“You have a board vote Thursday.”
“For what?”
Her silence answered before she did.
Nathan felt cold.
“What vote?”
Rebecca looked toward Sophie.
“This is not a conversation to have in front of her.”
Nathan took Sophie upstairs to the residential wing adjoining Asterion’s private science campus.
He cleaned her cheek with a cool cloth.
Sophie barely spoke.
Finally she asked, “Did Mom really leave because she didn’t love me?”
“No.”
“You used to say maybe she got scared.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
He had said worse things in anger during the first year.
Things Rebecca had encouraged him to say because, according to her, Sophie needed closure.
“I was wrong.”
“About Mom?”
“About telling you something when I didn’t know if it was true.”
Sophie looked at the broken notebook.
“Can you fix it?”
“I’ll try.”
She shook her head.
“Mom said broken things don’t get fixed by pretending they didn’t break.”
Nathan stared at her.
“That sounds like her.”
“She wrote it on the first page.”
That first page was gone.
Rebecca had torn it.
Nathan put Sophie to bed with the notebook beside her.
When he returned downstairs, Rebecca was waiting in his study.
A leather folder sat on his desk.
“What is that?” Nathan asked.
“Our postnuptial agreement.”
“Why?”
“Because tonight proves we need boundaries.”
Nathan laughed without humor.
“You hit Sophie, destroyed evidence connected to Elena’s disappearance, tried to stop a recording, and now you’re discussing our postnup?”
Rebecca remained calm.
“You are emotional. Emotional men make catastrophic decisions.”
“You mean decisions you haven’t prepared for them.”
Her eyes hardened.
“You want truth? Fine. Thursday’s board vote concerns a proposed merger with Northstar Defense Technologies.”
Nathan stared.
“I rejected Northstar.”
“You rejected one proposal eighteen months ago.”
“My company is not becoming a defense contractor.”
“Asterion is drowning in debt.”
“That’s impossible.”
Rebecca slid a financial report toward him.
Nathan read.
His stomach tightened.
Asterion had drawn $42 million against a revolving credit facility.
“Who authorized this?”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
Rebecca opened another page.
His electronic signature.
His board authorization.
His authentication certificate.
Nathan stared at it.
“I’ve never seen this resolution.”
“You signed hundreds.”
“Not this.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Then perhaps you should be more careful about accusing your wife of crimes when your own name appears on every document.”
Nathan looked up.
“Who has access to my authentication credentials?”
“Several executives.”
“You.”
“Yes.”
Rebecca gave him a sad smile.
“Elena accused me too.”
Nathan froze.
“When?”
“The week before she disappeared.”
“You never told me.”
“Because she was unraveling.”
Nathan remembered Elena screaming in this same study three years earlier.
You don’t know what they’re doing in your name.
He had been exhausted.
A launch contract was failing.
Their marriage had been collapsing.
Rebecca had told him Elena was paranoid because of stress.
Nathan had believed Rebecca.
His phone buzzed.
Security Director Daniel.
Nathan answered.
“We recovered part of the planetarium log,” Daniel said. “Someone deleted a protected archive five minutes after the program activated.”
“From where?”
A pause.
“Mrs. Hale’s administrative account.”
Nathan stared at Rebecca.
She saw his face.
“What?”
Nathan put the call on speaker.
Daniel continued.
“There’s something else. That archive had been untouched for three years. But someone accessed it every month.”
Nathan’s voice dropped.
“Which account?”
Daniel answered.
“Rebecca’s.”
Rebecca stopped breathing.
Nathan ended the call.
Neither of them moved.
Finally Rebecca whispered, “You have no idea what Elena put in that system.”
Nathan took the leather folder from his desk and threw it into the fireplace.
The papers caught slowly.
Rebecca watched them burn.
“That agreement has copies.”
“I know.”
“What are you doing?”
“Correcting my first mistake.”
“And what was that?”
Nathan looked toward the ceiling, where Sophie was sleeping.
“Trusting you more than I trusted my daughter’s mother.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
Then she smiled.
Not warmly.
“You’re too late.”
Nathan felt the warning in those words.
“For what?”
Rebecca picked up her purse.
“The court finalized Sophie’s adoption six months ago.”
Nathan said nothing.
Rebecca opened the door.
“If you try to take her from me, Nathan, I have exactly the same legal status you do.”
She left.
Three seconds later Nathan’s phone rang again.
This time it was Asterion’s chairman.
“Nathan,” he said, “Rebecca just called an emergency board meeting.”
“For Thursday?”
“No.”
May you like
The chairman swallowed.
“For tomorrow morning.”
