Chapter 4
Margaret insisted the signature was hers.
She also insisted she had never seen the page.
Evelyn believed both could be true.
Three years earlier, Margaret had signed an entire stack of documents through Garrett’s office to preserve her anonymity.
She remembered a trust certification.
A donor authorization.
Several account-transfer forms.
She did not remember an advisory contract.
“You didn’t read everything?” Evelyn asked.
Margaret gave her a tired look.
“I was trying to move nearly four million dollars in forty-eight hours without you finding out.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. I didn’t read everything.”
Evelyn sat back.
Her mother’s mistake was ordinary.
That made it more dangerous.
Garrett did not need to forge a signature if he could bury one bad page between nine legitimate ones.
Evelyn ordered a forensic document review.
She also moved out of the Park Avenue apartment she shared with Garrett.
Not permanently.
Not yet.
She took a suite at the Vescari family townhouse on East 73rd Street.
Margaret stayed there too while her hip healed.
Garrett arrived that evening.
A bodyguard stopped him at the door.
He called Evelyn from the sidewalk.
“You changed access?”
“Temporarily.”
“To my wife’s house?”
“The townhouse belongs to Vescari Holdings.”
Garrett laughed bitterly.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The name.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“You’ve been waiting years to remind me I’m not really one of you.”
“You shoved my mother onto the floor.”
“And you broke two orchestra screens with me.”
“You swung first.”
“I’m talking about everything before that.”
Evelyn looked through the upstairs window.
Garrett stood beneath the awning.
“You think every argument is about your last name,” she said.
“Because with your family, it is.”
He disconnected.
That accusation stayed with her.
Garrett had entered the Vescari organization as a senior associate before they married.
Older men still sometimes referred to him as Evelyn’s husband instead of by his title.
Evelyn knew he hated it.
She had defended him more than once.
Perhaps not enough.
The document specialist called two days later.
Margaret’s signature was genuine.
But the page itself had been inserted into the packet after the other documents were prepared.
Different printer.
Different paper batch.
Same signing session.
Someone had added it before Margaret put pen to paper.
Only three people had handled that packet.
Margaret.
May you like
Garrett.
And Diane.
