Chapter 4 - THE FOLDER
Ingrid drove through the night to reach the coastal clinic, telling no one — not her partners, not the board, not even her own assistant — where she was going.
She found Veronika propped against pillows, her face bruised, her collarbone in a sling, alive in a way that made Ingrid's hands shake as she gripped the door frame.
"You knew," Veronika said. It wasn't a question. "You warned me."
"I warned you he might be after your money," Ingrid said quietly. "I didn't think he'd be after your life."
She had brought the folder — the one the notary had been paid to keep sealed. Inside were documents Alex had filed eight months before the wedding: a private inquiry into Veronika's estate structure, a consultation with an inheritance attorney under a false name, and, most damning, a life insurance policy taken out on a woman he had not yet proposed to, in an amount large enough to make even Ingrid's stomach turn.
"He planned this before he ever said he loved you," Ingrid said.
May you like
Veronika didn't cry. She had done all her crying in the four days it took her to remember her own name. What was left now was colder, and far more useful.
"Then we plan too," she said. "But he doesn't get to know I'm alive. Not yet."
