Chapter 2 - Keep Talking
For a few seconds nobody moved. The only sound was Nora, kicking and crying in the bassinet across the room.
Then Grant lunged for my pillow.
Rachel got between him and the bed before his hand landed. "Touch that phone and I'll add destruction of evidence to the list."
Bianca yanked the coat tight around herself and backed toward the window.
Margaret recovered first. She always did. "This is a private family matter."
"It stopped being private," Rachel said, "when you hit my client and demanded her signature while she was medically incapacitated. That's coercion. In front of witnesses."
The charge nurse came in maybe a minute later with two security officers. She took one look at the welt on my cheek, pushed Nora's bassinet back to my side, and told Grant, Bianca, and Margaret to get out of the room.
Rachel asked security to lock down the hallway camera footage and to make a forensic copy of the recording on my phone before anyone touched it.
Only after the door shut and locked did I let myself shake.
Rachel put her hand over mine. "You did the right thing, calling me before they took you into surgery."
Three weeks before any of this, I'd found a run of invoices from a company I didn't recognize — BCA Advisory. Grant had personally approved five hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars in payments to them for something described as "site strategy consulting."
The registered manager of BCA Advisory was Bianca Cole.
By the time I went into labor, Rachel and a forensic accountant were already quietly following the money while I smiled at Grant across the dinner table and pretended I saw nothing.
Then, the night my water broke, Grant picked up our shared tablet and searched "spouse incapacity voting rights."
I photographed the search history from the back of the ambulance and sent it to Rachel.
"I need him to think he still has a shot," I told her.
So we let him talk.
From the hallway outside my room, Grant called members of my board and told them I'd suffered permanent brain damage in surgery. He emailed them a forged proxy with a scan of my signature pasted onto it and scheduled an emergency meeting to make himself acting chief executive.
Margaret told hospital security I'd attacked her during a "postpartum episode."
Bianca sat in the parking garage and posted online that Grant was finally "free."
Every lie went into the file.
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Rachel filed for an emergency protective order and got on the phone with the independent directors at Prescott Property Group. But there was one thing she made sure Grant never heard.
My trust required live verification from my attorney before a single asset could move while I was incapacitated. No encrypted authorization from Rachel, no transfer. Grant's forged proxy wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.
