Chapter 6 - MY SIGNATURE
The forensic document examiner separated the records into four categories.
Clearly forged signatures.
Copied signature images.
Genuine signatures attached to altered packets.
And genuine documents I had signed without understanding their consequences.
The last category hurt most.
Two years earlier, I had signed a limited power of attorney allowing Diego to manage “cooperative administrative matters” while I underwent surgery.
The power lasted ninety days.
A later copy extended it to five years.
My initials appeared beside the amendment.
The initials were genuine.
I had added them to a correction on another page.
Someone moved the page into the power-of-attorney packet.
The notary stamp came from the cabinet behind the mirror.
The notary, Claire Rowan, had reported her stamp stolen eighteen months earlier.
She did not know the Vances.
Other documents were fully genuine.
I authorized Diego to receive board notices.
I approved a renovation loan.
I signed a confidentiality agreement involving “potential building improvements.”
The agreement prevented me from discussing proposals I claimed never to have seen.
Diego had presented it as a contractor privacy form.
I signed too quickly.
Rachel made me write a complete timeline of every signature I remembered.
“I should have read.”
“Yes.”
“I trusted my husband.”
“Yes.”
“Everyone will say an educated woman should have known.”
“Some will.”
“I work in contract administration.”
That fact worsened everything.
I was a senior procurement manager for a hospital network. My job required reviewing vendor agreements and identifying hidden obligations.
At home, I stopped applying the same discipline.
Diego called contracts unromantic.
He said marriage should not feel like an audit.
I wanted to believe trust meant fewer questions.
My employer placed me on administrative leave because VSV Urban Partners had bid on a medical-campus housing project connected to the hospital network.
I had not disclosed the company.
I did not know it existed.
Until the investigation cleared me, I could not handle contracts.
The Vances had used my professional position too.
VSV’s project proposal listed me as an experienced hospital procurement executive advising on healthcare-residential development.
My résumé appeared in the submission.
One paragraph came from an internal biography not publicly available.
Diego had access through my laptop.
The company lost the bid.
Still, the undisclosed connection created a conflict investigation.
I had signed one annual employer form stating I held no outside management role.
On paper, that statement was false.
Intent mattered for discipline.
Facts had to be corrected first.
The police recovered the notary’s stolen stamp from Victoria’s personal assistant’s office.
The assistant, Paige Nolan, claimed Arthur gave it to her and said it belonged to the family company.
She entered a cooperation discussion.
Paige admitted preparing documents but denied knowing Diego would assault me.
Then she revealed that the family had planned two ways to obtain my biometric confirmation at dinner.
Voluntary signature.
Or emergency use of my unconscious hand.
May you like
The plate had not necessarily been intended to injure me that severely.
But the possibility of incapacity had been included.
