Chapter 42 THE EAST GARDEN WALL

Chapter 42 THE EAST GARDEN WALL
The frost hadn't lifted yet when Kira slipped out the side door, and the morning cold hit her lungs like a slap the moment she stepped outside. She pulled the thick coat she was wearing tighter and moved quickly along the hedge line, ignoring her breath fogging in front of her as her sneakers crunched softly over grass that was still stiff with ice.
The east wall soon came into view through the grey half-light, running the length of the garden's far border. She counted the posts as she walked, third from the left the way Rex had told her in the garage, and bent down when she reached it. Taking a quick look around to make sure no one was watching her, she ran her fingers along the base of the stones until she found the one that moved slightly under pressure.
With tense but careful moves, she wiggled it gently until it came loose. She squeezed the folded memo into the gap left behind, and then carefully eased the stone back into place until it looked exactly like every other stone beside it.
She was straightening up, brushing frost from her knees, when she suddenly heard footsteps on the path behind her.
Rex appeared from the direction of the hedge, moving quietly in a thick woolen sweater that had its collar turned up against the cold. He didn't call out to her or made any move to get her attention directly. He casually walked by and simply crossed the last stretch of frozen grass and stopped on the other side of the wall's long shadow that was close enough to speak without raising his voice, and far enough so that anyone glancing out from the house would see two people who happened to be standing near the same wall.
"You're up early," he said with a small grin.
Kira shook her head slightly and managed a small grin. "So are you."
He took yet another glance back toward the house, a habit she recognized all too well now. It was also the same quick assessment she had started doing herself before she said anything that mattered. Satisfied, he turned back to her.
"I heard from my contact overnight," he said.
Something in his tone made her go very still. "And?"
"There's a document," Rex said. "It was filed eighteen months before Elena's supposed death. My guy pulled it from a financial registry that Victor's legal team apparently forgot to seal properly, buried under a dozen shell filings that were probably meant to bury it for good."
"What kind of document?"
"A reassignment," he said. "All of Elena's personal accounts and holdings, they have all been quietly folded back into Hawthorne Industries… Filed under a marital asset consolidation clause." His jaw tightened as he said it, and Kira realized that he'd probably been turning the words over all night and hadn't found a way to make them sound any less ugly.
"It was never disclosed to her own lawyers, Kira.” Rex continued. “Not a will adjustment or anything that happened after she died. This was all done while she was still alive."
Kira felt the cold settle deeper into her chest than the morning air alone could account for. "He took everything from her," she said slowly, "before she even died."
"That's what it's looking like, I'm afraid."
Kira shook her head in disgust. "While she was still living in his house and sleeping in his bed."
"Looks that way," he said slowly, quieter this time.
She stood in the frost with her hands buried in her pockets, staring past him toward the grey shape of the estate rising out of the mist, and something in her chest went very cold.
"How did your guy even find this?" she asked. "Especially if it was buried that deep."
"He's good at what he does," Rex said with a chuckle. "And Victor's people got sloppy. Whoever filed it assumed no one would ever go looking, so they didn't bother covering every trace leading to it. It happens more than you'd think actually. Rich men forget that paper trails don't disappear just because they stop thinking about them."
Kira thought the words over, watching her own breath float into the cold air. "Can it be used?" she asked. "As evidence. Something we could actually take somewhere."
Rex was quiet for a while, and that silence told her more than an immediate answer would have. He looked toward the wall, toward the stone she'd just replaced, and there was something calculating behind his eyes now, something that reminded her uncomfortably of Victor even as it belonged entirely to Rex.
"It depends on what else we find to go with it," he said finally. "One document on its own is a filing anomaly, and a decent lawyer could argue it away in an afternoon. But if we can connect it to the other thing…the memo you found, the containment language…then it stops being an anomaly. It starts being a pattern." He looked back at her. "And patterns are a lot harder to just argue away."
"So we need more," Kira said with a determined look creeping up her face.
"We need more," he agreed. "And I may already have an idea where to start looking."
She wanted to ask him what that meant, wanted to press him on exactly what he intended to do and how far he was willing to go to do it, but the sky behind the house was beginning to lighten at its edges, and she knew they didn't have much time left before the estate woke up and every unaccounted for minute became a question someone might ask.
"We should go in separately," she said.
"I know," he replied, having already seen her uneasiness.
Neither of them moved for a second longer than they should have.
"Rex," she said, and stopped, because there wasn't a safe way to finish whatever she'd been about to say out here in the open, in the cold, where a window somewhere in that grey house might be watching without either of them knowing it.
He seemed to understand anyway. Something eased slightly in his expression, and he nodded, a small and certain nod before he turned and walked back the way he'd come. His footsteps were quiet and unhurried across the frozen grass, giving nothing away to anyone who might be looking.
Kira waited until he had disappeared past the hedge before she headed back toward the house herself, taking the longer path along the far side of the garden so that their tracks in the frost wouldn't run with each other.
The cold had worked its way fully into her now, settling into her bones in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. She thought about Elena willingly signing papers she didn't understand, perhaps even being made to, or never even being shown them at all. She thought about a woman losing everything she had built while she was still alive to feel it happen, still sitting at that same dining table, still watching frost melt on that same lawn, with no idea that her own supposed husband was quietly dismantling her out from under her.
Whatever Victor Hawthorne was capable of, it was worse than she had let herself imagine, and yet she was still living under his roof, lying beside him in the dark, and still smiling at him over breakfast every single morning.
Kira reached the side door, let herself in, and climbed the stairs to her room without meeting anyone in the empty hallways.
Seven days, she thought again as she closed her door softly behind her.
And suddenly, those seven days felt like it might not be enough time at all.