Chapter 4: The Morning After the Night Before
The hotel room was clean and anonymous and Nora sat on the edge of the bed at 2 a.m.
without turning on the television.
She called her attorney at 7:30 a.m.
— Daniel Marsh, who had handled her business contracts for six years and who she had always trusted to be direct.
"Tell me everything," he said.
"Don't edit it."
She told him everything.
The snake.
The recording.
The divorce petition with Edgar's signature already on it.
Heather Perkinson.
The pregnancy.
Kristina's words through the bedroom door.
When she finished, Daniel was quiet for three seconds.
"The camera footage is the most important thing right now," he said.
"Don't share it with anyone.
Don't send it to Edgar, don't send it to the police yourself yet.
Bring it to me first."
"Why?"
"Because I want to make sure we use it in the right order.
Criminal charges against Kristina are possible — attempted harm, reckless endangerment, potentially more depending on how the DA reads intent.
But if we play it wrong, we lose leverage on the civil side."
"The divorce."
"The divorce, the asset division, and the insurance policy.
Edgar is still the named beneficiary on a $25 million policy.
We need to change that before anything else."
Nora hadn't thought about the policy since the night before.
She thought about it now.
"He could have filed a claim," she said.
"If the snake had worked."
"Yes," Daniel said.
"He could have."
She stared at the wall across from the bed.
"Daniel.
Did Edgar know about the snake?"
"That," he said carefully, "is what we need to find out.
Because if he knew — even if he didn't place it himself — his exposure changes significantly."
After she hung up, she sat for a moment longer.
Then she opened her phone and pulled up the camera app linked to the bedroom device.
The footage was there — timestamped, clear, forty-seven seconds of Kristina in thick gloves with a cloth bag and a long stick, whispering about $25 million and Heather Perkinson and a child.
She watched it once.
Then she locked her phone and called her operations manager to say she would be working remotely for the rest of the week.
At 11 a.m., her phone rang.
Edgar.
She let it ring.
At 11:04, a text: *We need to talk.
Please.
Not about the divorce.
About my mother.
I didn't know, Nora.
I swear I didn't know.*
She read it twice.
She didn't reply.
At noon, Daniel's office called to confirm her 2 p.m.
appointment.
She showered, dressed, and drove across the city feeling something she couldn't immediately name — not calm, not anger.
Something more like the sensation of standing at the edge of a very large decision and knowing, for the first time in years, that she was the only one who would make it.
Daniel's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building downtown.
His paralegal, a composed woman named Grace, met her at the reception desk and walked her back without small talk, which Nora appreciated.
Daniel stood when she came in.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, and had the particular stillness of a man who had heard a great many terrible things and learned not to perform surprise.
"Sit down," he said.
"I've been doing some research since we spoke."
Nora sat.
"Heather Perkinson," he said.
"Do you know who her father is?"
Nora shook her head.
Daniel turned his monitor so she could see it.
The name on the screen was one she recognized immediately.
Her stomach dropped.
"That's impossible," she said.
May you like
"It's not," Daniel said.
"And it changes the picture considerably."
