Chapter 21 - THE MEETING HE COULD NOT CONTROL
Wendy agreed to meet Gregory beneath the jacaranda.
Amelia remained on the terrace. Gregory’s attorney stood near the gate. The conversation was recorded, and Gregory understood that nothing he said would purchase forgiveness.
The garden had recovered faster than Wendy had. New grass covered the anchor holes. Purple blossoms fell where Isabella’s veil once touched the ground.
Gregory carried no folder.
“I did work for the company,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I helped save contracts.”
“Yes.”
“And I used that truth to justify taking what was never granted.”
He placed Lucía’s bank card on the marble table.
A handwritten number on the back belonged to an old telephone-message service maintained by Lucía’s law firm. Gregory called it on the morning of the wedding and entered the date engraved inside the pearls.
Lucía’s recorded voice answered:
If a Vance asks you to prove love by taking authority from Wendy, the request is the proof.
Wendy stared at him.
“You heard that before the ceremony.”
“Yes.”
“And continued.”
“Yes.”
“Why keep the card?”
“At first, as leverage. Later, because destroying it meant admitting I had heard her.”
He had already amended his police statement.
Then he looked toward the house.
“I loved parts of our life.”
Wendy’s anger rose, but Gregory continued.
“That did not make me safe inside it.”
For once, he did not ask love to reduce the evidence.
He also corrected Isabella’s timeline. She copied the Monday folder before the ceremony and threatened to go to Wendy unless Gregory proved the transfer was consensual.
“What did you do?” Wendy asked.
“I told her returning to you would mean admitting she betrayed you for nothing.”
He had not forced Isabella to remain.
He had used the shame she already carried.
Gregory entered a plea the following week. He admitted unauthorized access, false vendor representations, conspiracy involving the forged property documents, and obstruction connected to deleted files. No one promised that cooperation would keep him free.
Richard was arrested the same morning on charges supported by lender messages, shell-company records, forged authorizations, and attempted evidence destruction. Pike faced separate charges. The man caught behind the jewelry shop admitted cutting the power under instructions from an Alder Crest security manager.
Wendy watched none of the arrests on television.
She went to work.
Naomi placed a letter on her desk. The public-sector client introduced by Halcyon was suspending its contract pending an independent review.
Reyes Strategy Group could survive.
Not without cuts.
Forty-three employees had already endured frozen payroll because Wendy acted alone in panic. Now they faced another crisis created by people who had never met them.
Her first instinct was to cover everything from personal savings.
Naomi saw the answer in her face.
“No,” she said. “The company cannot keep surviving through whatever Wendy Reyes decides in the worst hour of her life.”
The words hurt because Gregory had once praised that exact instinct.
Wendy looked at the payroll schedule.
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The wedding began as a theft from her.
Its consequences had finally reached people who never entered the garden—and this time, saving them could not mean taking control again.
