—
I pulled my phone from my bag, keeping my voice low enough not to disturb the surrounding rows, though I suspected, given the pale, frozen tension radiating from our small section, several nearby passengers had already begun quietly listening.
“My attorney, Marisol Anand, is currently reviewing the shell company transfer documentation with the district attorney’s financial crimes division,” I said. “As of this morning, there’s a formal freeze request filed on the offshore account. I’d imagine, by the time we land, it will already be in effect.”
“You can’t do that,” Desmond said, though the tremor in his voice suggested he understood, with growing horror, that I already had.
“I already did. Twelve years, Desmond. I learned every single one of your tells. The pause before a lie. The way you check your phone twice as fast when you’re hiding something. The particular vagueness you use when describing a trip you don’t actually want examined closely. I’ve been watching those patterns build for months, and I finally decided to stop pretending I hadn’t noticed.”
—
The remaining flight passed in a strained, near-silent tension, Desmond alternating between desperate, hushed attempts to negotiate and long stretches of grim, cornered silence. Priscilla, once she’d fully absorbed the scope of what she’d apparently unknowingly become entangled in, spent most of the flight with noise-canceling headphones on, staring resolutely out the window.
We landed in Lisbon to find, exactly as Marisol had promised, a formal notice already filed against the offshore account — a temporary freeze pending full investigation into the fund transfers, alongside a customs flag that meant Desmond, upon arrival, was pulled aside for additional questioning regarding the exact nature of his international financial activity.
I didn’t wait for him. I collected my single carry-on, walked past the customs officials now escorting my husband toward a separate interview room, and took a taxi to a hotel I’d booked myself, weeks earlier, entirely independent of whatever plan Desmond had believed he was executing.
—
