The signature looked almost perfect.
Almost.
My full name curved across the bottom of a loan authorization form in dark blue ink.
Whoever had copied it knew how I crossed my first letter and how I dragged the final stroke of my last name slightly downward.
But they had missed one detail.
I never connected the final two letters.
On the document in my hands, they touched.
I looked from the forged signature to Adrian.
He stood six feet away in the lobby, his face drained of color.
The anger he had displayed moments earlier was gone.
His eyes remained fixed on the page as if he could force it back into the envelope.
“What is this?” I asked.
He recovered quickly.
“Nothing you should be examining in front of my employees.”
“That’s my name.”
“It’s a preliminary form.”
“With a signature I didn’t write.”
The silence around us deepened.
Tessa placed her folder on the reception desk and opened it.
Inside were copies of bank statements, internal invoices, email printouts, and handwritten notes arranged by date.
Adrian’s gaze snapped toward her.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he said.
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” she replied, although her hands were shaking.
“I sent the originals to compliance this morning.”
A muscle moved in Adrian’s jaw.
He turned to me and softened his voice.
“Let’s go somewhere private.
You’re upset, and she’s taking advantage of that.”
I stared at him.
Minutes earlier, he had accused me of humiliating myself.
Now that the envelope was open, he wanted privacy.
I looked down at the first document again.
It was an application for a home-equity line secured against our house.
The requested amount was two hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
The house Adrian and I had bought eleven years earlier.
The house whose mortgage I had helped pay while he built his career.
The house he had repeatedly assured me was our safest asset.
The application listed an account I did not recognize as the destination for the funds.
“Did you borrow against our home?” I asked.
“No money was taken.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He glanced at the employees watching through the glass walls.
“This is a complicated financial matter.”
Tessa pulled a bank statement from her folder.
“The line was approved three weeks ago,” she said.
“The first transfer cleared last Friday.”
She pointed to a highlighted entry.
One hundred and forty thousand dollars had moved from the loan into an account belonging to a company called Aster Advisory.
I had never heard the name.
Adrian had.
I saw it in the way his shoulders tightened.
“What is Aster Advisory?” I asked.
“A vendor,” he said.
Tessa shook her head.
“It’s his company.”
Adrian stepped toward her.
