Chapter 2 - THE GRIEVING WIDOWER
The funeral was closed-casket, which surprised no one — the body, Alex explained through tears that impressed even the harshest of Veronika's board members, had never been recovered from the depths where she fell.
He wore black beautifully. He held a framed photograph of their wedding day at the memorial and told three hundred mourners that Veronika had been the first person who ever looked at him and saw more than his age, that she had taught him what it meant to be loved without condition.
Her lawyer, a sharp, silver-haired woman named Ingrid Wexler, watched him from the third row and said nothing. She had warned Veronika once, gently, that she would be careful in her place. Veronika hadn't listened. Now Ingrid sat with her hands folded and did the only thing a good lawyer could do with grief she didn't trust: she waited.
Within a week, Alex filed the paperwork. As Veronika's legal next of kin — a widower, a husband of exactly one signed and sealed morning — he was entitled, according to the marriage documents, to full control of her holding company pending confirmation of death.
Ingrid stalled every filing she legally could. She requested forensic review of the marriage contract. She requested the flight manifest from the helicopter company. She requested, quietly, a meeting with the notary who had performed the ceremony.
The notary never returned her calls. Three days later, his office reported he had gone on unplanned leave.
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Alex, meanwhile, began meeting with a real estate group interested in liquidating Veronika's overseas properties. He smiled through every meeting. He signed nothing yet — he was advised to wait for the death certificate — but he circled dates on a calendar like a man counting down to Christmas.
He did not notice the black sedan that began parking outside his apartment each evening, engine idling, headlights off.
