Chapter 3: The Other Woman’s Access

Sloane called at 9:12 the following morning.

Claire recognized the number. She had never saved it, but she had looked at it often enough during the last three months.

She let the call ring out. A message followed.

I need to explain the document. Adrian doesn’t know I’m contacting you.

Claire forwarded it to Tessa. The reply came quickly.

You don’t need to speak with her. If you choose to, take notes immediately afterward. Do not tell her where you are.

Claire read Sloane’s message again.

There was a part of her that wanted to hear the woman apologize. Another part wanted to ask when the affair had begun, whether Adrian had ever mentioned Claire’s pregnancy, and what Sloane had thought would happen after the babies arrived.

Neither part was likely to get an honest answer.

But Sloane had said

the document

. Claire called her back.

“Claire,” Sloane said, sounding almost relieved.

“You have five minutes.”

“I know how this looks.”

“Then you can skip that part.”

Sloane went quiet for a beat. Office noise murmured behind her: a printer, voices, a door closing.

“The agreement was never meant to be used,” she said.

“What was it meant for?”

“A backup. Adrian was under pressure after the harbor contract fell apart. Owen’s office drafted several scenarios in case he needed to leave the country quickly or you needed protection.”

“Protection from whom?”

“I don’t know the names.”

“You ran the department that sent it to legal.”

“I coordinated the paperwork. I didn’t write the terms.”

Claire kept her voice steady. “Who put my signature on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who told you I’d agreed?”

Sloane exhaled. “Adrian said you trusted him to handle security.”

“That is an answer to a different question.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“Then tell me why the agreement describes a separation. We weren’t separating when it was drafted.”

“I assumed it covered every possibility.”

“And you never asked?”

Sloane said nothing.

Claire looked out at June’s back garden. Frost silvered the grass. Through the window, she could see her aunt walking the boy slowly around the kitchen, waiting for him to settle.

“Yesterday,” Sloane said, “I heard the little girl needed an extra check before discharge. Is she all right?”

Claire went still.

Only the hospital staff, June, Tessa, and Claire knew that her daughter had needed a second temperature check before they could leave. It had been routine. Claire had not mentioned it in her message to Adrian.

“Who told you that?” she asked.

“I thought Adrian—”

“He didn’t know.”

The office noise on Sloane’s end seemed suddenly louder.

“Someone in the company is following our medical care,” Claire said.

“No. Claire, that isn’t what I meant.”

“Then where did you hear it?”

“I may have misunderstood something Owen said.”

“Owen wasn’t at the hospital.”

Sloane’s voice hardened. “You’re treating me like I planned your entire life. I didn’t.”

Claire believed that Sloane had not planned all of it. She was no longer sure which part the woman

had

planned.

“Don’t call me again,” she said. “Give anything you know to my lawyer.”

She ended the call and wrote down every sentence she could remember. Tessa answered on the first ring.

“Sloane knows a detail from the hospital,” Claire said. “I haven’t told Adrian.”

Tessa asked for the exact words. Then she said, “I’ll make inquiries. Don’t assume yet how she got the information.”

“I’m not assuming. I’m writing down what she said.”

“Good.”

Claire sent her notes, then turned off her phone.

June came into the room with the boy against her shoulder. “Bad call?”

“Useful call.”

“You look pale.”

“I’ve looked pale since Tuesday.”

“That was yesterday.”

“Then I’m consistent.”

June gave her a look but handed her son over. He rooted against Claire’s shirt, impatient and warm. Holding him made the questions feel more urgent, not less.

Claire fed him while June warmed a bottle for his sister. When both babies were settled, she opened her laptop and searched the files she had copied from Adrian’s study.

There were photographs of eight pages. The arrangement she held in her hand contained nine.

She checked twice.

One page had clung to the back of another while she took the photographs. It sat between the proposed household staffing plan and the signatures. Claire eased it free.

It was an acknowledgment form authorizing the release of limited medical information to a named security coordinator.

The coordinator’s name was printed clearly.

Sloane Mercer.

Claire photographed the page and sent it to Tessa. Then she called the hospital’s patient services office and asked how to review any authorization on file for herself or the twins. The woman who answered explained the process and gave her a secure way to submit the request.

Claire followed it before she could lose her nerve.

Adrian called as she finished. This time, she answered.

“Are they all right?” he asked immediately.

“Yes. They’ve been examined. They’re with me.”

The breath he released sounded rough. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Did you authorize Sloane to receive information about me or the babies?”

“No.”

Claire waited. She had learned that silence sometimes made people answer the question they wished she had not asked.

Adrian spoke again. “Why?”

“Her name is on a medical-information form in the folder. She knew something about our daughter’s hospital check.”

“I didn’t know that form existed.”

“You signed the packet, Adrian.”

“I signed something. I’m trying to find out what was put in front of me.”

“You should have found out before signing it.”

“I know.”

His quick agreement unsettled her more than an argument would have. She could not tell whether he understood the weight of what had happened or had simply learned which answer might keep her on the line.

“I’ve asked for the legal office’s records,” he said. “Owen is preserving them.”

“My lawyer has asked too.”

“Claire, I didn’t tell anyone to forge your name.”

“I haven’t said you did.”

“Do you believe me?”

She looked at the twins, sleeping side by side on June’s sofa under separate blankets. Adrian had not been there when they arrived. That fact was certain. The rest would take more than a phone call.

“I believe you don’t know everything your people have done,” she said.

His silence lasted several seconds.

“That’s fair,” he said at last.

“No. It isn’t. I lived in that house. Our children were going to live there. You made your ignorance my problem.”

Adrian did not answer.

Claire heard a knock at the other end of the line and Owen’s voice, too distant to make out. Adrian said he would have the records sent directly to both lawyers.

“Do that,” she said.

“And Claire?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

She shut her eyes. She had wanted those words while laboring in the bathtub. Hearing them now did not put him there.

“So am I,” she said, and ended the call.

An hour later, Tessa sent a brief update. Owen’s office had located the request that created the medical form. The request had come from Sloane’s department, but it had been approved under another executive’s account.

Claire opened the attached record.

The approver was

Nathan Cross

, Adrian’s oldest business partner. She knew him as the man who had toasted their marriage, sent flowers when she announced the pregnancy, and told her at dinner last month that twins would need “a great deal of careful management.”

Claire looked again at the date beside his approval.

It was entered six weeks before the babies were born.