Chapter 4 - The House With No Locked Doors
Khloe refused Dominic's penthouse.
She refused his downtown hotel.
She refused the Moretti family estate.
“I need somewhere that doesn't belong to a man.”
Dominic considered that for exactly two seconds.
“My sister owns an apartment in Lincoln Park.”
Khloe narrowed her eyes.
“Does your sister actually own it?”
“Yes.”
“Not you?”
“No.”
“Can Derek get inside?”
“Not unless he develops the ability to walk through reinforced steel.”
That earned the first real laugh Dominic had heard from her.
Two hours later, Khloe met Sofia Moretti.
She expected another intimidating criminal aristocrat.
Instead, a five-foot-four brunette wearing sweatpants opened the apartment door and said, “You must be the woman who finally made my brother interesting.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
“Sofia.”
“What?”
Khloe laughed again.
Sofia hugged her carefully.
“No questions tonight. Guest room is down the hall. Refrigerator is full. Bathroom has enough pregnancy products to open a pharmacy because Dominic apparently believes pregnant women require seventeen different kinds of lotion.”
“I asked the pharmacist.”
“You interrogated the pharmacist.”
Dominic looked offended.
“There is a difference.”
Khloe watched them.
For the first time, she saw Dominic not as the whispered name from newspaper stories but as someone's older brother.
Sofia showed Khloe the apartment.
At the guest room, she handed her a key.
Khloe stared at it.
“What is this?”
“Your bedroom key.”
Khloe's smile faded.
Derek hated locked doors.
He used to unlock the bathroom if she stayed inside too long after arguments.
“You can lock it?”
Sofia frowned.
“Of course.”
“From the inside?”
“Khloe.”
Dominic's voice came quietly behind her.
She turned.
He understood.
“No one enters without permission.”
Something tightened in her throat.
She closed the bedroom door.
Then locked it.
She stood there listening to the click.
A tiny sound.
Freedom sometimes was.
The next three weeks transformed her.
Not visibly at first.
Her belly grew.
The bruises on her elbow disappeared.
But internally, Khloe began rebuilding something Derek had dismantled piece by piece.
Choice.
She hired divorce attorney Evelyn Ross using money from selling a diamond bracelet Derek had given her.
She opened her own bank account.
She obtained copies of tax returns.
Then she began examining the financial documents Dominic's legal team had uncovered.
Khloe had studied forensic accounting before marrying Derek.
She had abandoned graduate school after he convinced her they should “build their life together.”
Now, sitting at Sofia's kitchen table at midnight, she found the first crack.
“These invoices are fake.”
Dominic leaned over her shoulder.
“How can you tell?”
“The vendor numbers repeat.”
He studied the spreadsheet.
“I don't see it.”
“Because you're looking at amounts. Look at dates.”
Khloe pointed.
“Every third Thursday, Hale Development paid consulting fees to three companies. Different names, different banks—but the invoice sequence follows one pattern.”
Dominic looked at her.
“How did my auditors miss that?”
“Because Derek knows how auditors think.”
“And you know how Derek thinks.”
Khloe's expression darkened.
“Yes.”
They traced $6.4 million before sunrise.
Dominic ordered coffee.
Khloe ordered pancakes.
“Pregnancy cravings?”
“No. Emotional damage.”
He almost choked on his coffee.
She smiled.
Then his phone rang.
The smile disappeared from his face.
“What?”
He listened.
“When?”
Khloe watched his eyes harden.
Dominic ended the call.
“What happened?”
“Your house was broken into.”
“My—Derek's house?”
“The office specifically.”
Khloe went cold.
“Someone removed documents and destroyed a computer.”
“Derek?”
“He's claiming burglary.”
Khloe thought.
Then remembered something.
“There is another computer.”
Dominic looked at her.
“Where?”
“In the nursery.”
An hour later they entered the house with Khloe's attorney and two private security officers.
The nursery hurt most.
Derek hadn't touched it since she left.
A wooden crib stood beneath painted clouds.
Tiny clothes remained folded in drawers.
Khloe crossed toward the rocking chair.
“What computer?”
Dominic asked.
She knelt carefully.
“Not exactly a computer.”
She pulled an old laptop from beneath the chair.
“I used this for graduate school. Derek thought it stopped working.”
“Did it?”
“The screen did.”
Dominic connected it to an external monitor.
The desktop appeared.
Khloe smiled.
“Hello, old friend.”
She searched archived folders.
Taxes.
Household budgets.
Derek's company files.
Then she found an automatically synchronized folder dated fourteen months earlier.
Inside were hundreds of documents.
Dominic opened one.
His face changed.
“What?”
Khloe asked.
He turned the screen.
It wasn't an invoice.
It was a life insurance policy.
On Khloe.
Five million dollars.
Beneficiary: Derek Hale.
Khloe stared.
“I never signed this.”
Dominic looked at the signature.
Another forgery.
Then Khloe noticed the effective date.
Two weeks before the brake failure that had caused her car to crash into a guardrail the previous winter.
She slowly sat down.
“Dominic.”
“Yes?”
“My brakes didn't fail.”
His face became stone.
“No.”
Khloe stared at the nursery around her.
For months, she had believed Derek wanted to control her.
May you like
Now another possibility entered the room.
Perhaps, eventually, Derek had planned for her not to leave at all.
