Chapter 6 #2
Nathan turned when Annie entered. He had changed clothes, though she doubted he had slept. He wore jeans and a dark sweater, and there was a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw. His eyes went straight to the bruise on her cheek. Pain crossed his face, immediate and contained.
Tricia stood. “Annie. I’m Tricia Valez. We’ve met briefly.”
“I remember.”
“This is Samuel Pike from outside counsel, and Deena Morris, digital forensics. We can leave if you want privacy.”
“No,” Annie said. “I want to hear everything.”
Tricia nodded once. “Then I’ll be direct.
We have enough to initiate an internal investigation into Ms. Halpert’s access and conduct involving company systems and philanthropic entities.
We also have enough to send preservation letters to Dr. Lane and ClearPath.
Whether Ms. Halpert personally threw the brick is unknown. The camera access is significant.”
Deena turned her laptop toward Annie. “Brooke’s administrator account disabled the back deck camera from a mobile connection. We’ll need more to identify the device, but the account used was hers.”
“She’ll say someone else used it,” Annie said.
“Likely,” Tricia said. “But it narrows the story.”
Nathan’s phone lay face up on the counter, untouched. Annie glanced at it. “Has she contacted you?”
“Seven times,” Nathan said. “Four texts. Three calls.”
“Did you answer?”
“No.”
Tricia slid printed pages toward Annie. “We preserved the texts.”
Annie read them.
You need to call me before this becomes irreversible.
I don’t know what Annie is telling you, but she is escalating exactly the way Bea warned.
If you bring lawyers into this, you will destroy everything we built.
Nate. Please. I have protected you for years. Do not make me regret it.
Annie set the pages down. “Protected him from what?”
No one answered immediately.
Nathan looked at Tricia. Tricia’s expression did not change, but something in the kitchen tightened.
Annie turned to Nathan. “Do you know?”
He held her gaze. “There are things Brooke knows that I’m ashamed of. Nothing criminal. Nothing that would justify this. But yes. She knows old things.”
“What kind of old things?”
His throat moved. Tricia said, “Annie, some of that may relate to legal strategy if Ms. Halpert attempts reputational harm.”
“I’m his wife,” Annie said without looking away from Nathan. “I have been treated like a liability in my own marriage by people who built a strategy around my ignorance. I’m done with rooms where everyone else knows more than I do.”
Nathan looked down. Then he said, “My father’s debt.
My mother’s breakdown. An early investor who pulled out because he thought I exaggerated our first revenue projections.
I didn’t lie, but the reporting was messy.
Brooke helped clean it up, and she has always implied it could look worse than it was. ”
Tricia’s mouth tightened. “Nathan.”
“No,” he said. “Annie needs to know.”
Tricia went silent.
Nathan continued, his voice rougher. “When I was twenty-six, I had a panic attack after a pitch meeting and drove drunk. I clipped a parked car. No one was hurt. Brooke’s uncle was a lawyer. They handled it quietly. I paid damages. It never became more than a citation.”
Annie folded her arms around herself. The details mattered less than the pattern. Brooke had been keeper of the locked cabinet. Every ugly, humiliating thing Nathan did not want seen had been stored with her, and he had mistaken that for safety.
“Anything else?” Annie asked.
Nathan’s face went still.
The room seemed to know before she did.
Before she could decide whether she wanted the answer, he gave it. “Before we got married, Brooke and I slept together once.”
All the practical language, all the legal strategy, all the gathered evidence fell away. Annie heard the sentence as if Nathan had spoken it underwater.
Before we got married.
Brooke and I.
Once.
She went cold from the inside out. “When?”
“After college. We were both drunk. It was awful. We never repeated it. I didn’t tell you because it didn’t feel relevant by the time I met you.”
Annie laughed once, softly, and hated the sound. “Didn’t feel relevant?”
He flinched.
Tricia looked away. Samuel pretended to review his notes. Deena watched the laptop screen with professional intensity.
“All these years,” Annie said. “All these years, I was told I was insecure for feeling there was something intimate and unresolved between you.”
“It wasn’t unresolved for me.”
“But it was there.”
Nathan said nothing.
“It was there, and you let me argue from the wrong facts.”
His face twisted. “Yes.”
The admission landed too late to help. Annie stepped back from the island. The room was too crowded. Too many witnesses. Too many people learning the shape of her marriage while she was still trying to understand it herself.
“Can you continue without me for a few minutes?” she asked Tricia.
“Of course.”
Nathan stood. “Annie.”
“No.”
He stopped so quickly his shoulder brushed the doorframe.
“I said I need a few minutes.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, beg, explain, apologize, all the old useless things. Instead, he nodded and went back into the kitchen.
Annie walked into the living room and closed the pocket doors.
The room was still shadowed because no one had opened the curtains.
The furniture looked too formal in the muted morning light: chairs chosen for guests, books arranged by color on shelves Brooke once teased looked like a hotel lobby.
Annie sat on the sofa and pressed both hands over her face.
Before we got married, Brooke and I slept together once.
It did not invalidate their vows. It did not mean Nathan had been in love with Brooke when he married Annie.
But it meant Annie had been right to feel something unspoken between them.
It meant Brooke’s confidence had roots. It meant Nathan had allowed Annie to believe the problem was her inability to tolerate an ordinary friendship when he knew the friendship had crossed a line.
Annie lowered her hands and stared at the dark fireplace. Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.
She almost ignored it, then answered. “Annie Grisham.”
For a moment, there was only breathing. Then Brooke said, “You’ll never break what Nathan and I have.”
Annie did not move. She looked toward the closed pocket doors. “Why are you calling?”
“Because you should know that you still don’t know the whole story.”
Annie’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I know more than you think. He told me about sleeping with you.”
Brooke laughed softly. “Did he tell you why he came to my apartment three weeks before your wedding?”
The closed doors seemed very far away.
“What?”
“Ask your husband what he said. Ask him what he almost did. Then ask yourself whether I’m the one who has been lying to you.”
The call ended.
Annie stood with the phone pressed to her ear until the dead line began to beep. Then she checked the call settings and saw the small red indicator at the top.
Recording saved.
She had started recording the moment she heard Brooke’s voice.
Annie walked back to the kitchen. Everyone looked up when she entered. Nathan rose from his chair, his face changing as soon as he saw hers.
“What happened?” he asked.
Annie set the phone on the island and played the call. Brooke’s voice filled the room, soft and poisonous. Ask your husband what he said. Ask him what he almost did.
By the time the recording ended, Nathan’s face had gone gray.
Annie looked at him. “Well?”
Nathan gripped the back of the chair. Tricia’s voice was low. “Nathan.”
He ignored her. He looked only at Annie. “I went to Brooke’s apartment because I was afraid.”
Annie waited.
“Not because I wanted her. Because I was terrified I would ruin your life.”
Her mouth tightened. “Convenient.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Then make it sound different with facts.”
He nodded once, breathing hard. “My father had called that week. He was drunk. He said marriage was a trap for people like us, that I would become him, that I would either leave you or make you wish I had. I didn’t tell you because you were happy and planning final details, and I was ashamed that he could still get inside my head. ”
Annie said nothing.
“I went to Brooke because back then, she knew that version of me. The version who believed him. I told her I didn’t know if I should marry you if there was any chance I would hurt you.”
“And what did Brooke say?”
Nathan’s face hardened. “She told me maybe I was right.”
Annie absorbed that quietly.
“She said if I had doubts that close to the wedding, I owed it to you to pause. She said she could help me tell you. She said no one would blame me once they understood.”
Brooke’s old rehearsal dinner toast flashed through Annie’s mind. Life had other plans.
“What did you do?” Annie asked.
“I left.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“No.”
“Did you touch her?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her you wished you had chosen her?”
“No.” His answer was immediate, almost fierce. “Never.”
“Did she ask you to?”
Nathan swallowed. “She said there was still time to choose a better life.”
Annie closed her eyes for one second. Brooke had waited at the edge of every fear Nathan had, offering herself as the safer road. “And you still kept her in our wedding.”
He looked down.
“You let her stand up at our rehearsal dinner and joke about ending up with you.”
“I thought it meant she was over it.”
Annie laughed under her breath. “You thought that because it was easier.”
“Yes,” he said. There was no defense in the word. Only shame.
Annie looked around the kitchen. Tricia and Samuel were silent. Deena had stopped typing. Everyone was witnessing a marriage being opened like a file, and Annie felt suddenly exhausted by being observed. “I need you all to leave.”
Tricia stood. “We can relocate to the office.”
Nathan looked at Annie. “You too?” he asked quietly.
“No. You stay.”
Something like fear crossed his face.
Tricia gathered her papers. “Nathan, we need to continue today.”
“We will,” he said, eyes still on Annie. “Later.”