Page 68 of Reveal

Is the woman transferring offshore bank accounts into an alias or something to cheat Carter out of them? Is that why it’s taking so goddamn long getting me her assets and financials? Something is going on, but fuck if I know what that something is.

Warm definitely isn’t a term one would use to describe Bianca. Not in the least.

“You ready for me?” Stuart asks as he comes in carrying a file box that has me raising an eyebrow.

I glance at my watch to check the time. “Yeah. I’ve got to head out in an hour or two, but we can go through what you’ve brought me.”

It takes Stu a minute to stack piles on my desk in order of client and file. We wade through whether we can use the information or not, if the facts can hold up in negotiations, and if we’d rather hold it close to our vest for a bit longer to see how everything pans out during mediation.

We also discuss the information he’s gathered on the clients I’m representing so there are no surprises from opposing counsel.

“We good?” I ask.

“Got a bit more for you on your other interest,” he says, referring to my request for him to dig deeper on Vaughn and her past.

“Is that so?” I ask, feeling like an asshole for uncovering everything about her layer by layer without her knowledge, but I know I’m only doing it because I’m trying to protect her from Carter.

“Her last name is technically not Sanders.”

I do a double take when I look at him, a little put off, a lot confused, and try not to be pissed that I didn’t know this. “Continue.”

“Her father’s name was Henson, but she wasn’t given his last name.”

“True, but Vaughn told me her mom’s family didn’t accept him. I bet you money her mom talked him into using the family surname with some excuse about inheritance simply because she was too chickenshit to go against her parents.”

“It happens.”

“More than you think.” I scrub a hand over my jaw. “So then what’s the last name on her birth certificate?”

“Dillinger.” It takes a second for the name to hit my ears and recognition to fire. The Dillingers of Greenwich. Stuart sees the minute it does and nods. “Yes, she’s one of those Dillingers.”

“Well, shit.” I rise from my desk and walk to the windows as I wrap my mind around all this. The small world we live in. This unexpected connection Vaughn and I somehow unknowingly share. And the quiet fury that rages beneath my more than calm demeanor . . . but Stuart knows I’m trying to rein it in. He knows better than to talk right now.

“So her last name is Dillinger?”

“Up until she was seven years old it was. Then her mother filed for a legal name change to Sanders. I’m assuming there were reasons for her to give her children the maiden name of their maternal great-great-grandmother, but none that I could find.”

I slide my hands into my pockets, and I continue to stare out the window but never really focus on a single detail.

I think of my college roommate, Chance Dillinger, and the stories he’d tell me of his cold family steeped in generations of tradition. The old-school rules they adhered to that weren’t allowed to bend to modern ways. Marriage only to those with a specific bloodline. The requirement for the males of the family to be sent to boarding school and away from their mothers so they’d never get soft. Soft men don’t become captains of industry.

How convenient that they send all the boys of the family away so all the little girls are left as perfect prey for their perverted uncle. My stomach churns.

“It’s a good name. Sanders,” I finally say. “A hell of a lot better than Dillinger.”

“Mmm.” It’s all he says in response, and I can hear him shuffling through papers. “The interesting thing is I messed up first go ’round. She has two uncles named James. Both brilliant in their own right. One named Dillinger. Another named Sanders.”

“And you thought the Sanders one was—”

“—the one you were looking for. Yes.”

“It makes sense why there was nothing there,” I finish for him, referring to why we couldn’t find anything nefarious on the James Sanders we’d found . . . but then again, there aren’t often neon signs pointing to child predators. “Anything on James Dillinger?”

Stuart’s silence weighs down the room until I turn around to face him. His look says everything.

“What?” I ask.

“Things don’t exactly add up.”