Yvette arrived at a neighborhood bakery wearing a plain coat and carrying a canvas tote.
Damian had expected a woman who looked like the glossy portraits on Cedric Vaughn’s company website.
Instead, she looked exhausted.
She placed two conference programs on the table.
The printed schedules showed Cedric speaking at a private investment dinner during the same evening Briana claimed she had been alone in her hotel.
Yvette had attended the dinner unexpectedly and seen them leaving together.
“That doesn’t prove an affair,” Damian said.
“No,” Yvette answered.
“It proves that somebody lied about where they were.”
She let him sit with the distinction.
Damian appreciated that she did not ask him to believe more than she could demonstrate.
He told her about the bracelet.
Yvette recognized the jeweler’s packaging.
She had purchased Cedric’s anniversary gift there for twelve years.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Then Yvette reached for her coat.
“I didn’t ask you here to recruit you into revenge.”
“What did you ask me here for?”
“Because I want to stop feeling insane every time he says I imagined something.”
Damian looked at her hands.
They were shaking.
He understood that feeling better than he wanted to admit.
CHAPTER THREE: THE FOUNDATION
A week after their first meeting, Yvette called Damian again.
This time her voice sounded angry rather than frightened.
She had founded the Harbor Light Foundation before she married Cedric.
The organization paid for emergency accommodation and practical training for adults leaving dangerous living situations.
Its annual benefit had been a fixture in the city’s wealthy social calendar.
Cedric liked to introduce himself as the foundation’s most generous supporter.
Yvette had recently discovered that a building promised to the foundation was no longer available.
Cedric told her a contractor had failed to obtain permits.
The contractor told her his crew had never been hired.
“Someone is lying,” she said.
Damian asked why she was telling him.
“Because you know how buildings work.”
Damian owned a small mechanical contracting company.
He installed ventilation and temperature-control systems in kitchens, clinics, and workshops.
He did not know billionaire finance, but he knew the difference between a building that had been prepared for occupancy and one that had not.
Yvette asked him to inspect the proposed training center with her.
He agreed on the condition that she pay his normal consulting rate.
She laughed for the first time since they met.
“You are the first person this month who has refused to pretend that helping me is a favor.”
The training center stood in an old printing warehouse.
The windows were intact, but several interior walls had been stripped to bare studs.
The advertised classroom had no functional ventilation.
A newly painted sign on the front fence announced that the center would open in six weeks.
Damian examined the electrical panels without touching them.
He noticed that the building had been presented in fundraising materials as almost finished.
“It isn’t,” he told Yvette.
“How far from finished?”
“Far enough that nobody should promise a date.”
She showed him a photograph from the previous year’s benefit.
Cedric stood beside a large ceremonial key.
Behind him, a projection displayed a completed classroom.
Damian studied the photograph.
The room in the image did not resemble the warehouse.
“That is a rendering,” he said.
Yvette nodded.
“The donors were told it was a progress photograph.”
She stared through the unfinished doorway.
“I signed the letter that went with it.”
Damian could have reassured her that Cedric was responsible.
Instead, he said something more useful.
“Then you need to find out who approved the description.”
