“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Nancy’s eyes filled with tears.
For the first time that evening, she looked genuinely frightened.
Sean suddenly changed his approach.
“All right. Let’s stop this nonsense. There was an investment. It didn’t go exactly as expected, but the money can be returned. We don’t need to destroy two marriages over a financial disagreement.”
I almost laughed.
A financial disagreement?
He had proposed exchanging spouses while concealing a transaction involving my inheritance and a loan against my home.
“Then why the partner swap?” I asked.
He looked away.
“Because we needed time.”
“Time for what?”
He said nothing.
Rachel opened her folder and removed a photocopy of an email.
“I can answer part of that. Before I left the company, I saw correspondence suggesting that the partner-swap arrangement was intended to create confusion if either marriage broke down. There was discussion of claiming that everyone had voluntarily agreed to the arrangement, then filing financial statements that would make the transactions appear to have been part of a joint business plan.”
