She copied the documents with her phone.
Then she called Trent.
“I need you to tell me exactly what your father asked you to do,” she said.
“Mom, this again?”
“Not what he told you afterward. Before the party. Every word you remember.”
Trent was quiet.
“He said to make Miller angry,” he admitted at last. “He said if the guy hit me, we’d have a good video. But I didn’t think Dad wanted me actually hurt.”
Marianne closed her eyes.
“You understand that’s not what a father is supposed to ask his child to do?”
Trent made a sound that might have been anger or the beginning of a sob.
“He wanted me to win.”
“No,” she said. “He wanted to win something else. He let you think it was yours.”
She called Andrea Ruiz next.
And by the time Richard returned home, his wife had left the study drawer unlocked on purpose.
Chapter Eleven: The Offer
Richard knew something was wrong when he opened the drawer.
He had a habit of leaving papers aligned to the nearest edge. Marianne teased him about it. Now the contracts were arranged in a neat stack, but the top folder faced the wrong direction.
He went downstairs and found her sitting at the kitchen table.
“Were you in my office?” he asked.
Marianne didn’t pretend otherwise.
“Yes.”
“Those are business documents.”
“You planned to use that video against Joseph before Trent ever approached him.”
Richard pulled out a chair but didn’t sit.
“You have no understanding of what’s at stake.”
“I understand that a man was humiliated at a neighborhood party and our son threw a punch because you told him to create a scene.”
“I told him to be entertaining.”
“You put it in writing that you wanted restrictions placed on Joseph before the vote.”
Richard’s expression changed. Marianne had seen anger from him before. This was different. He looked frightened that somebody outside his control possessed information he couldn’t explain away.
“Those notes were hypothetical,” he said.
“Then you won’t mind the association seeing them.”
He straightened. “What have you done?”
