Chapter 3 - The Wall of Silence
For forty-eight hours, Andrew Weston lived inside a living nightmare.
He sat in the corner office of Weston Capital on the 42nd floor of a Midtown skyscraper, surrounded by half-eaten takeout containers, crumpled financial printouts, and the stench of stale espresso. Outside his glass walls, his analysts were scurrying like rats on a sinking ship. The market had opened, and the bloodletting hadn't stopped.
Weston Capital had lost nearly eight hundred million dollars in market valuation in two days. The Aquila Group was systematically hunting his fund, buying up his distressed debt and squeezing his short positions with terrifying, surgical precision.
"Find her!" Andrew roared, slamming both fists onto his desk.
Sitting across from him was Richard Vance—no relation to the Boston dynasty, merely Manhattan’s most expensive, vicious private investigator.
"I've been looking, Mr. Weston," Richard said calmly, tapping his tablet. "I sent teams to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her parents’ farmhouse is completely locked up. The neighbors say her parents sold the property three weeks ago to a private agricultural trust and moved away. No forwarding address."
"What do you mean, sold it?" Andrew’s voice was cracked and frantic. "Her father was an apple farmer! They barely made forty thousand dollars a year! Emma sent them money every Christmas!"
"Apparently not," the investigator replied dryly. "The deed was transferred for zero dollars. The property has been absorbed into a shell corporation. Furthermore, I pulled Mrs. Weston’s bank records. Her personal account—the one you let her keep—had a balance of three thousand two hundred dollars. It was closed yesterday morning at nine o’clock. The funds were donated to an animal shelter."
"Her phone?"
"Burned. The SIM card was destroyed at Teterboro Airport at 11:45 PM the night of the ball."
Andrew froze. "Teterboro? Did she board a commercial flight?"
"Teterboro doesn't do commercial, Mr. Weston. She walked onto a private jet. A Gulfstream G650."
Andrew let out a harsh, disbelieving bark of laughter. "Emma? On a private jet? She was afraid of turbulence on our first-class flights to St. Barts! She didn't know anyone who owned a jet! Did she have a lover? Was she cheating on me?"
The thought made Andrew’s stomach heave with violent, hypocritical rage. *Emma? His quiet, loyal Emma, sleeping with someone else?*
"If she had a lover, he’s a ghost with nuclear launch codes," the investigator said, leaning forward. "I pulled the flight manifest for every aircraft leaving Teterboro between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM. Every single tail number is accounted for except one. The flight plan for Gate 4 was classified under Department of Transportation Tier-One Corporate Privacy exemptions. The FAA won't touch it. My contacts at Homeland Security won't touch it. Whoever picked up your wife owns politicians for breakfast."
Andrew sank back into his leather chair, the blood draining from his face until his lips were blue. "That makes no sense. She’s nobody. Her maiden name was Miller! Emma Miller! I met her at a coffee shop near Columbia University while she was tutoring underprivileged kids!"
"Then perhaps you didn't look closely enough at who was tutoring whom," Richard murmured, closing his file. "Mr. Weston, my invoice is already paid. But my professional advice? Stop looking for her. People with that kind of air clearance don't like being tracked. If you keep digging, whatever is happening to your stock right now might happen to your personal freedom."
The investigator stood up, gave a curt nod, and walked out of the office.
Before Andrew could even breathe, the door swung open again, and Lila marched in.
She was dressed in a pristine white Chanel suit—bought with his credit card that morning—holding a glossy magazine.
"Andrew, darling!" she trilled, completely oblivious to the panic in the room. "The wedding planners from *Vogue* called! Since Emma signed the waiver, we can do the ceremony in the Hamptons in July! I was thinking peonies, white swans, and—"
"Shut up, Lila!" Andrew screamed, standing up so violently his chair crashed against the window.
Lila gasped, stepping back, her lower lip trembling. "How dare you speak to me like that! I stood by you! I gave you the glamour Emma never could! You told me she was a pathetic nobody who was dragging down your brand!"
"She took my life with her!" Andrew yelled, his eyes wild and bloodshot. "The board is meeting in ten minutes to remove me as CEO! The Aquila Group is buying out our mezzanine debt! We are facing total liquidation, and you are talking about swans and peonies?"
"Then buy them off!" Lila screamed back, her veneer of sweet compliance instantly peeling away to reveal pure, vulgar ambition. "Use your personal offshore trust! You told me you had fifty million hidden in the Caymans!"
Andrew stared at her. "I used that trust as collateral to leverage the tech fund... the fund Aquila is crushing."
Lila froze. Her eyes darted around the luxurious office, taking in the panic of the staff through the glass. Her face hardened. "So... you're broke?"
"I'm not broke!" Andrew pleaded, grabbing her shoulders. "Lila, baby, listen to me. We just need to weather this storm. You and me. The power couple, remember? You said you loved me for who I was!"
Lila shoved his hands off her with a look of utter disgust. "I loved the man who owned a jet, Andrew. Not a pathetic loser about to get kicked out of his own building by a ghost."
She turned on her six-inch Christian Louboutins and strutted toward the door.
"Lila!" Andrew shouted. "Where are you going?"
"To call my agent," she sneered without looking back. "I'm not going down with your sinking ship."
The door slammed shut.
Andrew stood alone in the center of his massive office. The silence returned—cold, suffocating, and absolute.
For the first time in his life, Andrew Weston felt the icy touch of genuine terror. He walked to the window and looked out over the skyline of New York.
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*Where are you, Emma?* he thought, his heart aching with a desperate, sickening pang of regret. *What did I lose?*
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