PART 2: The Signature I Never Signed
On Monday I arrived at the office before sunrise. Maya Brennan, my assistant and my friend since Northline’s first cramped year, was already waiting with a stack of folders.
“Claire, you need to see this yourself.”
She laid out the receipts Derek had submitted for months to justify the family payments. There were invoices for cardiology visits and therapy sessions, but none of the reference numbers matched a real clinic. One address appeared again and again: a townhouse in Midtown.
“Who lives there?” I asked.
Maya lowered her eyes. “Savannah Pierce.”
My breath caught. Linda had sworn she needed that money for medication, yet most of the six thousand dollars I sent each month had been paying Savannah’s rent, her nanny and a boutique pediatrician.
My attorney, Adrian Cole, told me to preserve every document and request the missing records formally. We couldn’t accuse anyone without solid proof. Then we found something worse. Savannah’s lease included a guaranty supposedly issued by Northline. When I requested a copy as the company’s legal representative, I saw a signature imitating mine. I had never authorized anything like it.
“This changes everything, Claire,” Adrian warned. “We’re not talking about just a divorce anymore. This could be forgery and misuse of company funds.”
That afternoon I canceled the supplementary cards Derek used, revoked his access to the corporate accounts and suspended the payments to his parents. Twenty minutes later, Linda called. “Claire! The deposit didn’t come through! What kind of woman abandons two elderly people?”
“The kind who just found out who’s paying Savannah’s rent.” There was silence. Then I heard Ray mutter in the background, “I told you to shred those receipts.” Linda hung up.
Two days later the bank alerted me that someone had tried to use an old card linked to my personal savings. I remembered that years ago I had left a backup card with my in-laws in case of emergencies. I had it blocked and filed a dispute.
The next morning, Derek stormed into Northline’s lobby demanding a corporate card to buy a crib and a stroller. When security refused to let him through, he shouted in front of my employees, “I’m the owner’s husband! Half of this is mine!”
Maya forwarded me the incident report. I replied with one line: Keep the footage, and don’t let him scare anyone.
Meanwhile, Adrian formally notified Derek that the house belonged to the company, that his permission to stay would be revoked and that we would coordinate the return of his belongings. Derek answered with a mocking text: Saturday I’m bringing Savannah and the movers. By then you’ll understand whose house it is.
That night, Renee Alvarez, the private investigator I had hired to look into the possible fraud, sent her first report. Linda had been introducing Savannah to her friends as her future daughter-in-law and Derek as a tech millionaire. For months Derek had been posing as the founder of Northline. They had even booked an engagement gala at a country club in Alpharetta, with a hundred and fifty guests and a champagne tower, all counting on my money.
But Renee had uncovered another lie. Savannah was in frequent contact with a man named Jace Monroe, her on-and-off boyfriend of many years. In several recent photos they were embracing, long after she had started flaunting her romance with Derek online.
“There’s more,” Renee told me. “Jace told a friend he and Savannah were still together when she got pregnant.”
A chill ran through me. “You’re saying Noah might not be Derek’s?”
“It’s possible, but there’s no paternity test. What we know for certain is that she’s hiding a relationship that’s still going on.”
At that moment another text came from my husband: Saturday, eleven a.m. Have the keys ready.
I looked at the papers spread across my desk. Derek believed he had outsmarted his wife. His parents believed they had traded me for a more obedient daughter-in-law. And Savannah believed she was about to marry a CEO.
Then Renee sent one last photo, taken just two days earlier. It showed Jace Monroe on a park bench, holding Noah in his arms and kissing the top of the baby’s head like a father.
