Page 62 of The Marriage Blunder

“I’m not saying it’s a direct line,” Delancy added. “But if I was building a map, this would be the first red pin.”

Alejandro sipped his water, gaze locked on the monitor. He didn’t blink, but his left eyebrow went up a quarter-inch.

Delancy moved on. “Mercer’s firm runs all event infrastructure for the Braddock social calendar—official, unofficial, and legacy events. Most of it is white-glove, some is off-books. She’s been skimming for years, but only recently started coding ghost events.” He gestured, and the screen populated with three flagged invoices: the event name, the hosting entity, and three “guest lists” stripped from the metadata.

“The pattern,” said Delancy, “is three events in the last four months. Two are shell companies. One is flagged as ‘private strategy session’ for a non-existent foundation. The guest lists overlap with your board, Kenneth. Voss is at all three. Two more names—“ click, names highlighted, “—from the extended circle. The third event, last week, guest list is redacted, but there’s a single payment to a courier service. That’s where your sister comes in.”

He pulled up a final screen. It was Carolyn, captured in high-res from a security cam outside Mercer’s building, carrying an envelope, her expression carefully neutral, but her knuckles white on the paper.

“She’s not the architect,” Delancy said. “She’s the go-between.” He left the rest unsaid, but every person in the room could see where it was headed.

For three seconds, nobody spoke. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator and, faintly, the whir of the HVAC keeping the windows from fogging over.

Miles tapped his pen, once, but did not write. I could see the gears turning in his head: case law, federal statutes, the precise language needed to make any of this actionable if they needed it.

Kenneth’s composure had not changed, but I saw the micro-movement of his right hand, a flex that meant he was running the names through his own internal counter-intelligence.

Lucas asked, “Anything on the mastermind?”

Delancy shook his head. “Not yet. The event codes are unique, not recycled. The routing on the payments is triple-blind. Whoever set this up is either very new at it, or very good. I’ll know within forty-eight hours.”

I put my hand on the back of Kenneth’s wrist, just briefly. The pulse under my fingers was steady, but I felt the tension. He didn’t look at me, but he did, infinitesimally, relax his jaw.

Miles said, “If we can tie the shell events to any communication between Mercer and Voss, that’s a straight-line to conspiracy. Board-level, at minimum. If there’s interstate, it goes to federal wire fraud.” He said it the way you’d say, “We need more milk,” but with an edge that told me he’d be up all night looking for the link.

Kyue, who had been silent until now, asked, “And what about us?”

Delancy smiled, not kindly. “If you’re not getting tracked, you will be. And it won’t be social media. It’ll be direct. I’d say you’re already on three lists.”

Lucas nodded, as if expecting it. He looked to Kenneth. “You’ll want Jake’s trackers. Both of you.” He meant me and Kenneth, but said it like a done deal.

I said, “Isn’t that a little much for—”

Kyue, gently, turned his left hand over on the counter. Just below the base knuckle of his pinky was a pale, half-centimeter scar, raised and visible under the lights. He said, “It saved my life.”

That was the end of my objection.

Kenneth, who had already pulled his phone, was texting. He didn’t need to say who he was contacting. He looked at me, then the rest of the table. “Jake will have them ready tomorrow, first thing. We’ll go together.”

Fred, silent to this point, cleared his throat. “Anything you want watched, specifically?”

Kenneth said, “The building, the staff, and every delivery, but focus on the internal. The threat isn’t coming from outside.”

Fred nodded once. I believed he would know if a single cracker went missing from the kitchen.

I sat with the silence for a beat. The world I had grown up in was risk-averse, careful. I had spent most of my life working to be invisible, and now I was being fitted for a tracking device.

And yet, I wasn’t scared. I was, for the first time, pissed off.

Delancy met my eyes, and, for the first time, smiled in a way that was not a weapon. “You’re going to be fine.”

I believed him.

The war room disbanded with the collective relief of a jury that had been kept sequestered for two weeks and finally delivered its verdict.

Adams reappeared to clear the debris—coffee mugs, water glasses, the single, untouched decanter of scotch—and the crowd shifted from high alert to a looser, more human register.

Lucas and Fred split off to the corner of the kitchen, discussing, by the sound of it, the relative merits of steel versus reinforced composite on a particular brand of security door.