The Signature

Perry Nash's office at Kade Hall smelled like old paper and older money, and Isabel sat across the desk from him with a stack of documents thick enough to double as a doorstop, Josephine settled in a wingback chair by the window like a queen presiding over a transaction she'd already decided the outcome of.

"Confidentiality and settlement agreement," Perry said, sliding the first page toward her. "In exchange for two million dollars, disbursed upon signature, you agree to make no public or private disclosure regarding the Kade family's financial affairs, including but not limited to the matters you and Mrs. Kade discussed last evening."

Isabel skimmed it. Standard enough, dressed in enough legal language to make her eyes glaze, but the shape of it matched what she'd asked for. She reached for the pen.

"One more thing," Perry said, not unkindly. "For the file. Would you mind restating, in your own words, the nature of what you're being paid to keep quiet about?"

Isabel hesitated half a second too long.

"For the file," Perry said again, gesturing at a small recorder sitting openly on the desk, red light blinking, which she was fairly sure had not been there a moment ago.

"I'm being paid two million dollars," Isabel said carefully, "to not tell anyone that the Kade family is forty-one million dollars in debt, and that Mrs. Kade has been secretly moving money into an account called Harlow Meridian that nobody else in this family knows about."

"Thank you," Perry said, and clicked the recorder off. "That's very clear."

Isabel signed. Somewhere down the line she'd think back and wonder why her hand hadn't shaken doing it, when every instinct in her body had gone quietly, electrically wrong the moment she'd said the word paid out loud with a red light watching her do it.

The wire transfer confirmation buzzed her phone twenty minutes later, right on schedule, two million dollars exactly, and for one clean minute Isabel let herself feel like she'd won.

Then her phone buzzed again. Camille.

Iz call me right now. I just found out who actually owns Kessler Fine Arts. The gallery you got fired from. You're not going to believe whose name is on the parent company.

Isabel's thumb hovered over the screen, the two-million-dollar confirmation still glowing in the other tab, and a very small, very cold thought arrived a full ten seconds before she was ready for it.

She looked up. Josephine was still watching her from the wingback chair, and she was smiling.