Episode 49
Episode 49
Information Overload
JULIANNE
“Breathe, Jules. It’s going to be okay,” Giovanni squeezed my hand and whispered in my ear as we took the elevator up to the twenty-second floor where my lawyer’s office was.
I cracked my neck from side to side and wiggled my body, staring at my all-white getup in the mirrored elevator doors. I’d gone for a body-hugging white leather pencil skirt and a silk chemise tank. No jacket. My internal temperature always tended to rise with my emotions and nerves. Already I could feel sweat coasting along the surface of my skin, dampening my underarms and making my hairline tingle.
Gio pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here, use this above your lip. I can see little droplets forming.”
“I’m going to ruin it with makeup,” I fanned my face with my bare hand, but it didn’t help.
“I don’t give a shit. I have a million of them. Just breathe, Jules. It’s all going to be fine. I’m here with you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you with me by your side. We’re going to go in there, they are going to inform us of their findings, and we’ll determine what our next steps are.”
Giovanni’s confidence helped ease a little of the tension making my heart pound like a base drum. I blotted the moisture off my face and hairline, then did the same under my arms. I looked up at Gio sheepishly. I wanted to run the cloth under my boobs to sop up any moisture there but drew the line at my pits. When I felt a bit less damp, I shoved the handkerchief into my purse to launder later.
“Thank you.”
“Happy to help,” he interlaced our fingers again and kissed the back of my hand as the elevator door opened.
I left my nerves in the elevator as I strutted toward reception. The woman behind the desk stood as we arrived.
“Mr. and Mrs. Falco?”
“That’s us,” I answered. I could have corrected her that my name would officially be Myers-Falco but it wasn’t imperative at the time.
“All the members of your meeting are already here. I’ll take you to them.” She led us through a series of cubicles and then down a long hallway to a set of double doors. She opened the door and held it for us to enter.
“Mr. and Mrs. Falco,” she announced as I took in the room. Several people I didn’t know, all wearing business suits, sat around a large conference table. The wall opposite the door was floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the natural morning light. Plants dotted the space, making it feel a little less corporate.
My lawyer, Ms. Christofferson, approached first, cutting a razor-sharp image with her blunt-cut blonde bob and Alexander McQueen steel-gray suit. She shook both of our hands and gestured to a pair of vacant leather chairs.
Giovanni held my chair until I got seated, undid the button on his suit jacket, and took his own seat. I loved watching him move with such subtle grace. Gio was a man who commanded a room. Not only with his stature but with his stoic nature and cool expression. He didn’t give anything away, which made him a lethal adversary in corporate circles.
“Thank you for joining us,” Ms. Christofferson said, her hands clasped together as she gazed around the room.
We did a round of introductions of a bunch of lawyers and their positions within the company and how they would be helpful on my case, all of which I forgot the moment they said them. My heart was in my throat, my anxiety level through the roof, waiting to hear what these experts had to say. I was also eager to hear how we would approach the case with the authorities and the new information as it pertained to our parents’ deaths.
Within moments of the last introduction, my lawyer tapped a button on a hand-held remote and a movie screen lowered from the ceiling to cover the far wall.
“First, I’d like to have our experts go over their findings,” Ms. Christofferson announced. “We will begin with the graphologist, Mr. Ayers.”
A gray-haired man of somewhere north of sixty years old stood and approached the front of the room. He wore silver, wireframed glasses and held a laser pointer.
“If you’d direct your attention to the screen,” he announced, reminding me of when I was in college and the professors would stand in front of these large screens or whiteboards as they went over the coursework. “The image on the left is Rachel and Lewis Myers’ signature on the first submission of their wills.” Another image popped up right next to it. “This is the second submission, provided three years after the first.”
“They both look almost identical.” Giovanni stated flatly.
“That is correct,” the expert confirmed and posted another picture next to the first two. “The third was submitted roughly four years after the second.”
I squinted at the three signatures. “Again, they definitely look like they were signed by the same people. Except there’s a little loop on my mother’s Y in Myers where it was straight the first two times,” I noted, my stomach fluttering at seeing my parents’ names and signatures again.
“Yes, but that’s not uncommon for people who have letters such as Y, G, Q, Z in their name. It’s also not uncommon for signatures to take on a sloppy approach if people are in a hurry or signing their name quickly. Regardless, there are still consistent identifiers that prove these were done by the same person. The way the pen rests longer in specific spots leaving more ink is a distinct marker we look for.” He used something on the laser pointer that highlighted sections of each signature on both their names in each of the three documents. “See it now?”
All of the spots where a pen would have left a darker impression were the same.
“Fascinating,” I whispered.
“It absolutely is.” Mr. Ayers smiled and seemed to stand a little taller at my praise. “Now for the fourth, that was submitted only a year after their last one…”
“Which already is suspicious, as you know, when taking into consideration the timing of their deaths only a week later,” Ms. Christofferson added.
I reached out blindly and Giovanni was there, his warm hand enveloping mine, keeping me grounded. I tightened my grip as I stared at the screen, trying to find the differences in the four signatures.
“They…they look the same to me.” I said while clinging to my husband for support.
Giovanni pushed his chair closer, so that I could feel his leg and shoulder touching mine. He was staring intently at the screen. “I don’t see the differences either.”
Ayers’ eyes lit up. “That’s where we come in. Look here and here at those same impressions I showed you before.” He pointed to the ink blots on the screen.
We both stared at the first, second, third and then the fourth signature. The first three had those resting spots with more ink within the signature when magnified. The fourth, however, did not.
“That can’t be all?” Giovanni asked. “I wouldn’t imagine a court case can be won on this alone.”
The expert shook his head. “There’s more. Look at how Lewis was written on each. There’s one thing missing on the fourth.” He pointed to the little dot above the letter I in Lewis. The fourth was missing the dot above the letter. “People with this particular letter in their name rarely forget to dot it. Especially since we can prove with many, many samples of his signature that he’d never forgotten it before.”
“Interesting. Okay, so we have two discrepancies. Anything else?” I asked.
“Do you see the R in your mother’s name? Look closely at the level of ink spread across each R.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “You can tell your mother started writing her name from the top to the bottom. Meaning, she’d start her R from the top, went down, then traced the line back up, doubling the line in the first letter. See,” he pointed to the slight doubling of the line in each R that could only be seen when magnified. There, plain as day was a double line for each R. The fourth didn’t have one.
“You can tell the person who signed the fourth document started from the bottom. I’ve been a forensic handwriting expert my entire career. Not a single person has ever reversed where they start writing their letters. It isn’t natural to their unique handwriting DNA. But it is very common for someone who is tracing one’s signature to do it the wrong way. Say by holding it up to a glass window or a light. Let me show you.”
He walked over to us and put down a piece of paper and a pen. “Mr. Falco, would you be so kind as to sign your name on this sheet of paper.”
Giovanni took the pen and signed his name with a flourish.
“Now you, Mrs. Falco.” He shifted the same page to me.
I scribbled Julianne Myers-Falco .
Ayers took the sheet of paper, walked right over to the glass window and put a blank sheet on top of it. He slowly traced both signatures before placing them on the table under some device that displayed the pages on the screen.
I gasped as I noted how well he’d copied both of our signatures. “Wow, that’s eerie.”
He grinned, then magnified them and proceeded to show us where the two didn’t match even though, at first glance, they looked identical.
“With the few inconsistencies I’ve noted between the first three documents and the fourth submitted, I can say with ninety-nine percent accuracy the fourth will and testament allegedly submitted by your parents is indeed a forgery.”
Tears welled in my eyes, but I tamped them down. I could be strong a little longer.
“I’ve already submitted our experts’ reports to the court and notified the detectives on your parents’ case. With this information, I’m positive the judge is going to rule in our favor. I’ve also notified your parents’ lawyers, where the documents originated. They are currently doing their own internal investigation, but that will likely turn up nothing as the documents were updated and submitted via courier to their offices. They have the backup to prove it too.”
I rubbed at my temples, now completely on information overload. “This is a lot to take in.”
“We need to go to their house, Jules. Dig through their files to see if we can find anything that might help the case. Someone close to them had to have had access to these documents. Enough access to edit the language and terms so completely, then forge both of their names, and hire a courier to deliver them to their lawyers’ offices without their knowledge.”
“That could be anyone,” I whispered. “Not excluding Brenden, even though I truly don’t believe he had anything to do with it, unless it’s proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. I just can’t. He’s my brother, and I know how much he loved our parents. But there are so many staff, business acquaintances, their personal assistants…”
“They’ll all need to be interviewed. Let’s pull together a list of anyone you can think of now, and our office will get started on the process,” Ms. Christofferson offered.
I nodded as she dismissed the other people at the meeting and handed Giovanni and I each a legal tablet.
We spent a couple hours working on the lists. Giovanni even called Muriel, his executive assistant, to help. She immediately pulled a list of all the employees working at our company while Gio and I thought of other contacts, household staff, and anyone else who might be close to the family and benefit from changing the will.
The last part of the list was small and primarily included me, Giovanni, and Brenden. No one else received any benefit from their death, making it glaringly obvious that Brenden was the primary suspect. A fact I still couldn’t begin to wrap my head around.
It just wasn’t possible…was it?
Could Brenden truly hurt me and my parents like this?
* * * *
My brain was spinning in a variety of directions as we left the lawyers’ office. Giovanni led me numbly to the limo, and made sure I was buckled in.
“Where do you want to go now?” he asked, his warm palm covering my knee in a gesture of support.
I shook my head and stared out the window. “I don’t care. Anywhere.”
“Take us to my old place,” he instructed his driver.
I smirked. “Your old place…as opposed to your new one?”
He leaned over and kissed the bare curve of my shoulder. “Well, seeing as my wife doesn’t live with me, and I now live with her, I thought it prudent to gather some essentials and start the process of having my things moved to your home. Unless you’d rather we keep separate residences.” He frowned deeply, proving how much he didn’t like that idea at all. “Or I could call my realtor and have her look into new places for us.”
I appreciated he was kind enough to offer it, though I didn’t suspect he’d want to sleep apart from me. I certainly wasn’t keen on being without him now that we’d both admitted our love for one another and consummated our marriage…repeatedly…gloriously. And I was in no mood to start house hunting. Not until all of this was behind us could I even fathom such a task.
“No, I like the idea of you moving in as soon as possible, if that’s what you want.”
“What do you want? You made it clear you didn’t want to sleep in a bed I once shared with Bianca, so I put two and two together.”
I turned my head, lifted my hand to his face, and shifted his chin toward me. “You’re incredibly thoughtful, Gio. You know that?” I leaned forward and kissed him softly.
He smiled against my lips. “Expect a lot more of my generosity. I’ve had years of wanting to spoil you rotten.” He lifted my hand that held his grandmother’s ring and laid his lips over the top of it. I still couldn’t believe he’d given it to me and not Bianca. If nothing else, that gift spoke volumes about his love for me.
“Are you going to want to move your décor into my home? Do I need to plan to make room for all your man toys?” I teased, even as the idea of Giovanni fully moving in with me made my heart flutter and arousal ooze through my veins.
He chuckled low in his throat. “All of my toys are in the form of cars, boats, airplanes, and housing. I don’t think any of those would fit into your penthouse.”
“No sports paraphernalia? A giant pool table, or maybe a bunch of big screen TVs?” I walked my fingers from his knee up his leg, gratified when he cleared his throat, his gaze on my mouth.
“Actually, I do have a pool table, but I only have it for entertainment purposes,” his voice lowered to more of a deep rumble.
“So mostly to fill a big space in your gigantic penthouse?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Are we comparing penthouse sizes or dicks? Because I assure you, Julianne, I will certainly win at both.” His gaze heated, and I gripped his thigh with intent, feeling the powerful quad muscles underneath his slacks.
His cock hardened behind his slacks, pressing against the fabric not far from where I had my hand on his leg. My throat went dry, and I licked my lips as we got lost within one another’s eyes.
The limo suddenly came to a stop in front of his building.
“I could fuck you right here, right now,” I breathed. “Lift up this skirt, slide my panties to the side and ride you until we both lose our minds.”
His nostrils flared as his chest rose and fell. As he stared at me, he pressed a button on the console above our heads.
“Lee, drive around the block until I tell you to stop,” he commanded in that no-nonsense business tone I’d heard a thousand times.
“Sure thing, boss,” Lee confirmed, and the engine started once more, and pulled out into traffic.
I opened my mouth but didn’t know what to say as arousal tore through my body like white-hot fire.
Gio, ever ready for any unforeseen event, shifted his body to the center of the bench seat, undid his belt, unzipped his pants and pulled out his hard cock. Then he lifted his arms and placed his hands behind his head.
“Hop on, filthy girl, and show me what you’ve got.”