Still, I did not sleep much that night. I lay in the dark listening to the highway, thinking about Vanessa’s message. We have access to everything.
She was bluffing. She had to be.
But fear does not care about logic. It just sits in your chest, cold and sharp, and waits.
At six in the morning, I called Mr. Brennan.
“She’s threatening an audit. She thinks I’m hiding money.”
“Let her try. Everything is locked in trust. She’d need a court order, and no judge will grant one based on suspicion.”
He paused.
“Mrs. Hayes, do you want my advice?”
“Yes.”
“Stop being afraid of her. You have twenty-eight million dollars. She has a leased Audi and a husband she’s manipulating. You’ve already won. Now make her feel it.”
“How?”
“Buy something she cares about. Then take it away.”
It took me three days to find it.
Robert and Vanessa lived at the Ashford, a luxury building in downtown White Plains. They rented a two-bedroom on the top floor for thirty-four hundred dollars a month. I had seen the lease once two years earlier when Robert asked me to co-sign. I refused. Vanessa called me selfish.
