Chapter 6: The Director

Jake was whistling when he walked away down the block.

I stood on my stoop and opened the state registry on my phone with my thumbs shaking.

Northgate Consulting LLC.

I'd only looked at the address that afternoon.

I hadn't opened the filing.

I opened it now.

Organizer and sole director: Valeria M. Quinn, CPA.

My license number was right there.

My old address. My middle initial.

My signature at the bottom, a copy good enough that I stared at it and almost believed I'd signed it.

I remembered a Sunday last October.

Jake bringing me coffee in bed with a stack of forms.

"Lease renewal stuff, babe, just sign where the tabs are."

I had signed where the tabs were.

[Oh no.]

[There it is. That's how the cannon fodder goes to prison in the book. Her name, her license, her signature.]

[And when Lucian goes down, she goes down with him. Author tied it up with a bow.]

I sat down on the cold step.

Twelve days.

In twelve days Bianca would marry him, and the money would keep running through a company with my name on the door.

I could go to a lawyer.

With four hundred dollars.

I could go to the police and tell them my ex-boyfriend forged my name, and they'd look at the video with six million views and write down "stalker."

Or I could go to the one man who'd lose the most if I was lying.

I texted Margo. "I need to see him tonight. It's about Northgate. It's bad."

Two minutes later she answered.

"Aurelia. Penthouse. I'll call down. If this is a stunt I will end you."

The same lobby.

The same piano nobody played.

This time a man in a gray suit walked me to a private elevator and pressed a key into the panel for me.

Lucian opened the penthouse door himself.

He was in a black t-shirt and dark pants, barefoot, his hair not quite as perfect as it was in daylight.

I had never seen him without a jacket.

He looked younger.

He also looked like he hadn't been sleeping either.

"Margo says it's bad," he said.

I held out my phone.

"My name's on Northgate."