By evening, I found myself standing outside the office of the private investigator I had hired during the divorce. The same investigator whose findings had convinced me that Maren had betrayed me. His office was in a nondescript strip mall, the kind of place where secrets were bought and sold for a fee. The neon OPEN sign flickered against the closing dusk.
The moment I walked in, I demanded access to the original case files. The investigator, a man named Grimes, looked up from his cluttered desk with the weary eyes of someone who had seen too many sins. He hesitated, then reluctantly, he handed them over.
I spent nearly an hour reviewing documents. Photographs. Financial records. Witness statements. Everything seemed familiar. Until something suddenly caught my eye. A series of payment transactions. Large transfers. Several of them. All recent. And every one of them came from the same person. Tessa Whitmore.
The blood drained from my face. I turned the page. Then another. And another. My hands grew colder with every document. Hidden among dozens of reports was a signed statement I had never seen before. A witness claimed the hotel photographs had been staged. The necklace had been planted. And the entire operation had been orchestrated by the same person who paid for it. Tessa.
