It had been disguised as a corporate restructuring expense.
But the billing address belonged to Meredith.
I stared at the screen for several seconds.
The message suddenly made sense.
The ring is secured. See you Thursday, my king.
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because Clint had been so confident that I was too ordinary to understand what he was doing.
He had forgotten what I did for a living.
I wasn’t just a financial analyst.
I was a federal special agent assigned to complex financial investigations.
And very few people outside the Bureau knew that.
Not even Clint.
Especially not Clint.
I had kept that part of my professional life separate from my marriage.
Years earlier, when we were dating, I had told him that I worked in financial analysis.
That was true.
I simply hadn’t explained everything.
I had never seen a reason to.
Until now.
There was one person I needed to speak to before Thursday.
My uncle.
Richard Vance.
To the rest of the country, he was a senior FBI official with a reputation for being nearly impossible to intimidate.
To me, he was simply Uncle Richard.
I called him that evening.
He answered on the second ring.
“Clara?”
“Hi, Uncle Richard.”
His voice immediately softened.
“You don’t usually call this late.”
“I need your help.”
There was a pause.
“Is this personal or professional?”
I looked at the files spread across my desk.
“I’m not sure anymore.”
He became serious.
“Tell me.”
“I think Clint is involved in a financial scheme involving Sterling Global Assets.”
Silence.
Then:
“How serious?”
“Potentially millions.”
“Do you have evidence?”
“I have enough to make me very concerned.”
“Then don’t confront him.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
“I need access to some restricted financial records.”
Another pause.
“Clara, are you sure about this?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He sighed.
“All right. Send me what you have.”
“I will.”
“And Clara?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you find, don’t let your feelings for your husband interfere with the investigation.”
I looked at the wedding photograph sitting on my desk.
A picture of Clint smiling beside me five years earlier.
“I won’t.”
But after the call ended, I sat there for a long time.
Because the hardest part wasn’t discovering that my husband might be a criminal.
It was accepting that the man I married might never have been the man I thought he was.
Thursday finally arrived.
At exactly seven thirty, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror.
I chose a simple black dress.
