Chapter 1 - The Suitcase in the Rain
Tony threw my suitcase into the driveway so hard that the latch burst open against the wet pavement.
My passport skidded beneath the rear tire of his black sedan. A pair of shoes landed in the gutter. Clothes we'd folded together before our last trip to Chicago soaked up the October rain while the staff watched from beneath the mansion's covered entrance.
“You're nothing without me,” Tony said.
His black shirt clung to his broad shoulders. Water ran from his dark hair into the collar. At forty-nine, he still carried himself like a man who expected everyone else to move when he entered a room. He had brought three members of the household staff outside to witness my departure. I think he expected them to remember who had won.
I knelt and began gathering my things. My hands shook from the cold, but I kept my voice level.
“You should've checked my bag.”
I lifted my old leather purse. The little digital recorder slid from the side pocket beside my passport, and Tony's expression changed. It was no larger than a box of matches, black, scratched near the switch. He knew it because he'd bought the same model for his attorneys years earlier.
“Laura,” he said, suddenly almost gentle. “What have you done?”
I pressed PLAY. His voice came out thin against the rain, but the words were unmistakable.
“Move the relief money through Bayfront before the auditors get there. I approved every transfer. Tell Mercer I don't care what the families were promised.”
Tony lunged toward me. I moved backward, boots slipping. The recorder struck my palm as I closed my fist around it.
“Turn that off.”
At the gate, two dark vehicles rolled into the driveway. Their headlights cut through the rain, followed by the red-blue flashes of marked law-enforcement cars. Tony looked from the gate to me, and for the first time in our seventeen years together, he seemed unable to decide which threat deserved his attention.
Agent Daniel Cole stepped from the lead car, his dark suit soaked at the shoulders. The FBI credentials at his belt caught a flash of light. He was thirty-five and had a voice so controlled I sometimes mistook it for indifference.
“Mr. Rinaldi,” he called, “we have a federal search warrant for the residence and related records. Keep your hands where we can see them.”
Tony stared at me as officers came through the open gate.
“They've been listening for months,” I whispered.
That was true. It was also the smallest part of what I had done.
We had lived in the stone house outside Detroit for eleven years. I chose its kitchen tile and planted lilacs along the west wall. Our fundraising photographs lined the entrance. I used to believe the promises written beneath them.
Agent Cole approached without touching me. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
“You need to stay where we can speak to you.”
Agents entered the house under the warrant. Tony called his attorney, who loudly challenged the search. Cole explained the scope without pretending it established guilt.
Tony stepped close enough for the staff to hear his next words. “Ask her about the blue case in the study. Ask her why she signed the papers inside it.”
I stopped breathing.
Eight years earlier, I signed Bayfront Holdings bank and vendor forms because Tony said the company would handle property maintenance. I never checked its warehouse address or asked who verified its work.
I remembered exactly where Tony kept those papers: a blue fireproof case underneath his desk. The same case I'd photographed for Cole before I agreed to cooperate.
“You never told them that part, did you?” Tony asked.
Cole looked at me, not at Tony. “Laura?”
Rainwater filled the space between the buttons of my coat. My passport, still beneath the sedan, began to curl at the edges.
“I signed them,” I said. “And I need to explain why.”
May you like
Tony smiled without warmth as the agents carried the blue case out of our house.
“Good,” he said. “Now they know you're in it, too.”
