Chapter 4 - The Story He Told the World
By noon, Matthew had already created his version of the truth.
A statement appeared through his attorney.
Matthew Hayes categorically denies allegations arising from a private marital dispute. Mr. Hayes is deeply concerned for his wife’s emotional well-being and asks the public to respect the family’s privacy.
Emotional well-being.
Not broken ribs.
Not a fractured wrist.
Not twenty documented injuries.
Emotional well-being.
The article appeared online seventeen minutes later.
NEXUSCORE CEO EMBROILED IN DOMESTIC DISPUTE.
Dispute.
As if I had broken one glass and he had broken another.
Then came the anonymous sources.
Clare Sterling had been “unstable.”
Clare resented her husband’s success.
Clare had struggled with estrangement from her powerful family.
Clare had become “increasingly erratic.”
I read every word.
My father wanted the phone taken away.
I refused.
“Let me see what he thinks will save him.”
By afternoon, the narrative shifted again.
A photograph appeared of Matthew leaving a law office.
He looked exhausted.
Almost sympathetic.
The caption called him a “self-made technology visionary facing a personal crisis.”
I stared at those words for a long time.
Self-made.
Visionary.
Personal crisis.
The media did not know about the missing millions yet.
They did not know about my founder shares.
They did not know Lauren was cooperating.
They did not know Rachel Dunn existed.
Matthew understood something powerful men often understand before the people they hurt.
The first story told is often mistaken for the truth.
So he told his first.
At four o’clock, Detective Lena Ortiz entered my hospital room.
No uniform.
Dark blazer.
Small notebook.
She had the calm eyes of someone who had heard every lie human beings could invent.
My father stood.
“I’ll leave.”
Detective Ortiz nodded.
My mother followed him.
The door closed.
Ortiz sat beside me.
“I need to ask difficult questions.”
“Ask them.”
“Has he hit you before?”
I almost said no.
The word reached my mouth.
Then stopped.
Had he hit me?
Not with a cane.
But that wasn’t what she asked.
I remembered a hand around my wrist in Paris.
Fingers squeezing until bruises appeared.
A shove against a bathroom door in Boston.
A glass thrown past my head in Aspen.
The night he punched a wall beside my face and told me I was lucky he loved me enough to walk away.
“Yes.”
Ortiz waited.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did it begin?”
“About three years ago.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
I looked toward the window.
“Because the first time didn’t look like abuse.”
“What did it look like?”
“A bad night.”
“And the second?”
“A stressful month.”
“The third?”
“A misunderstanding.”
She nodded slowly.
“And eventually?”
I looked at her.
“Eventually my entire marriage became an explanation for why the last thing wasn’t really what it was.”
Ortiz wrote that down.
She asked about the cane.
The argument.
Lauren.
The garage camera.
Where Matthew stood.
Which direction I fell.
Whether he said anything during the blows.
I answered everything.
Then she asked,
“Did he count?”
“No.”
“You did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I thought about it.
“Because I needed to know there would be an end.”
Ortiz stopped writing.
After a moment she closed the notebook.
“We recovered the cane.”
“My father’s security people protected the scene.”
“They did.”
“Is that good?”
“Very.”
She hesitated.
“There’s something else.”
My stomach tightened.
“The building’s hallway camera outside your apartment stopped recording at 10:51 p.m.”
I stared at her.
“Matthew got home around eleven.”
“Exactly.”
“You think he disabled it?”
“We don’t know.”
“But you think it matters.”
“Yes.”
“Anything inside?”
“The penthouse security system was partially wiped at 11:08.”
My pulse accelerated.
“He planned it.”
Ortiz did not answer.
She didn’t need to.
At 11:17, the cane had come down.
Nine minutes earlier, the interior security archive had been erased.
This had not been rage.
Not spontaneous rage, anyway.
Matthew had walked into our home and removed witnesses before he raised the cane.
A memory came back.
His face.
Cold.
Controlled.
Fear beneath the anger.
Not fear of losing me.
Fear of what I knew.
“What did he think I had found?”
Ortiz looked at me.
“That is exactly what I was going to ask.”
The garage camera.
His car alarm.
I had checked it because the alarm kept activating.
But I had seen more than Matthew knew.
At 4:12 that morning, his car entered the private garage.
Matthew got out.
Then opened the passenger door.
Lauren stepped out.
But before they entered the elevator, Matthew removed a black document case from the trunk.
I remembered the symbol on it.
A silver circle crossed by three diagonal lines.
At the time, I assumed it was a NexusCore case.
Now the image returned with perfect clarity.
I reached for my phone.
“What are you doing?” Ortiz asked.
“Calling someone who used to work at NexusCore.”
“Who?”
“Priya Nair.”
Ortiz watched me find the number.
“What does she know?”
“I’m not sure.”
I pressed call.
“But three years ago, Priya told me Matthew had created a private division inside NexusCore.”
The detective leaned forward.
“What division?”
May you like
I remembered the name.
“Project Blackwell.”
