Chapter 1
“Sleeping in my bed was betrayal,” I said, lifting one of the forged pages with the tip of the bat. “Forging my name was a conspiracy.”
Claire went pale.
Gavin did not.
That difference mattered.
Broken glass covered the marble between us. The unopened Rolex box had landed near Gavin’s spare keys, and several pages from Claire’s folder had scattered underneath the hallway bench. Two of my bodyguards stood behind me while my husband stared at the paper instead of at the woman he had just been caught with.
He was more afraid of the signature than the affair.
I lowered the bat.
“Why?”
Gavin recovered first. “Serena, put that down.”
I almost smiled.
He was standing in my penthouse, beside documents carrying my forged signature, after I found him on my bed with my oldest friend—and somehow he still thought commands belonged to him.
“Why is Claire named as owner of my home?”
Claire’s mouth trembled. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
“Twenty-two years of friendship and that’s what you brought me?”
She flinched.
Gavin stepped forward.
One bodyguard moved between us.
He stopped.
Good.
I picked up another page.
Same signature.
Mine at first glance.
Wrong at second.
I always finished the final stroke of my surname upward. This one curved down.
Someone had studied me carefully.
Not carefully enough.
“When did you learn to copy it?”
Claire stared at the floor.
Gavin snapped, “She didn’t.”
Too fast.
I looked at him.
“You answered for her.”
Silence.
I turned back to Claire.
“You’ve seen my signature since we were children.”
Her eyes filled.
That confirmed it before she spoke.
Then one of my bodyguards bent beside the shattered console and picked up another page.
“Ma’am.”
I took it.
It was not about the penthouse.
It listed my lake house.
My private garage.
Two storage properties.
And three family residences nobody outside the Valenti inner circle was supposed to know I controlled.
I looked at Gavin.
His face finally changed.
May you like
The penthouse had never been the whole plan.
It was simply the first thing Claire was supposed to inherit after I disappeared from it.
