Chapter 3 - THE ACCOUNT DALIA SAID SHE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT
Dalia did not cry.
That surprised me.
I had expected something dramatic because the press loved describing her that way.
Fiery.
Passionate.
Socialite.
Words used when a beautiful woman had opinions in expensive clothing.
Instead, she became very still.
“Duval Strategic Outreach?”
Gabriel looked at her.
“Yes.”
“That is not my company.”
Julian answered too quickly.
“It’s connected to Fontaine Strategies.”
Dalia turned toward him.
“No.”
His face changed.
“What?”
“My firm is Fontaine Public Relations.”
“I know.”
“Duval Strategic Outreach is not mine.”
Julian looked toward Gabriel.
“There’s some mistake.”
Gabriel remained calm.
“The registered manager is Dalia Fontaine.”
Dalia stared.
“Registered where?”
“Tennessee.”
“I never formed it.”
I watched her.
Either she was an exceptional actress—
or something else had just opened.
Julian reached for her arm.
She stepped away.
“Don’t.”
“Dalia.”
“Why is my name on a company I don’t own?”
He lowered his voice.
“We can discuss this at home.”
I almost laughed.
That sentence.
Private.
Later.
Home.
The language people use when they need time to build another lie.
Dalia heard it too.
“No.”
A few guests had begun drifting toward the corridor.
Gabriel’s security quietly redirected them.
No spectacle.
Good.
We entered a small donor lounge.
Me.
Gabriel.
Julian.
Dalia.
And Helena Ross, an attorney who served as Allesian Hearts’ vice chair.
Helena closed the door.
“Nothing discussed here leaves this room unless counsel approves.”
Dalia laughed once.
“I’m apparently the registered manager of a shell company receiving charity money.”
Helena’s expression did not change.
“Yes.”
“I think we’re past decorum.”
Julian paced.
“This is ridiculous.”
Helena placed a tablet on the table.
“Duval Strategic Outreach LLC was formed four years ago.”
Dalia’s face changed.
“Four years?”
“Yes.”
“I met Julian three years ago.”
Silence.
I looked at him.
Dalia did too.
That was not a small problem.
Helena continued.
“The company was created eleven months before your first documented professional engagement with Allesian Hearts.”
“Who signed?”
“An electronic filing using your name.”
“I didn’t.”
Julian interrupted.
“Someone on the foundation team could have—”
Helena looked at him.
“Why would foundation staff create an LLC in the name of a woman who had not yet worked with the foundation?”
He stopped.
Good question.
Dalia sat.
Her hands were shaking now.
“What money went into it?”
Gabriel answered.
“Approximately two-point-three million over four years.”
“From?”
“Allesian Hearts.”
She looked sick.
“For what?”
“Communications consulting.”
“My actual firm billed Allesian Hearts less than two hundred thousand total.”
Helena nodded.
“That matches your corporate tax records.”
Dalia looked at Julian.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You knew.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why did you say it was connected to my firm before I told you it wasn’t?”
Julian stopped.
There.
Dalia had heard it too.
“You recognized the name.”
He said nothing.
“Julian.”
His expression hardened.
“It was a project entity.”
“For what?”
“Donor outreach.”
“Using my name?”
“It was temporary.”
“Four years?”
He rubbed his face.
“I was going to clean it up.”
I felt something cold.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
That was Julian’s moral framework.
Temporary.
Clean it up.
Later.
As long as the truth eventually became inconvenient enough to fix, the original lie somehow counted less.
Dalia stood.
“You used my identity before we were together.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
Julian turned toward Helena.
“I want counsel.”
She nodded.
“Good idea.”
Then Dalia asked—
“Where did the money go?”
Helena looked at Gabriel.
He answered.
“Some paid vendors.”
“Some moved to private hospitality accounts.”
“Some covered personal travel.”
Julian’s face reddened.
“What personal travel?”
Gabriel read from the preliminary report.
“Saint-Tropez.”
Silence.
Dalia looked at Julian.
Our honeymoon had been in Saint-Tropez.
Not theirs.
Mine.
Eight years earlier.
My stomach tightened.
Gabriel continued.
“Jackson Hole.”
I remembered.
Our fifth anniversary.
Julian had told me a foundation donor paid for the lodge because it was connected to a fundraising weekend.
Apparently—
maybe not.
“Lake Como.”
My chest hurt.
The miscarriage.
After the second loss, Julian took me to Lake Como because he said we needed to grieve away from doctors.
Allesian Hearts may have paid for part of it through a shell company carrying Dalia’s name before Julian ever met her.
There was something almost artistic about how many lies could occupy one memory.
Dalia whispered—
“You used charity money for vacations with your wife.”
Julian snapped—
“They were donor events.”
I spoke.
“No.”
He turned.
“At Lake Como?”
“You told me there were no meetings.”
His face shifted.
“You said the trip was for us.”
Silence.
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
He had heard me talk about that trip.
Not the money.
The grief.
I continued.
“You let me think it was the one time you chose me instead of work.”
Julian closed his eyes.
Dalia whispered—
“What else?”
Helena looked at the report.
“Private club dues.”
“Vehicle lease.”
“Two apartment payments.”
Dalia frowned.
“What apartment?”
Address.
She knew it.
So did Julian.
I did not.
Dalia’s face emptied.
“That was ours.”
There it was.
The apartment Julian claimed belonged to a friend when paparazzi caught him entering.
The affair apartment.
Paid at least partly through money routed out of a charity for children with heart disease.
Dalia covered her mouth.
I should have enjoyed the irony.
I did not.
Some betrayals become too ugly for satisfaction.
Julian spoke quickly.
“I can explain.”
Dalia turned.
“You used charity money to pay for the apartment where you cheated on Khloe with me?”
“Not exactly.”
“That is either yes or no.”
“It was a foundation lease.”
“For what?”
“Visiting donors.”
She laughed.
“We had sex there.”
Nobody spoke.
Julian looked at the floor.
Dalia sat again.
“Jesus.”
Then she looked at me.
Not defensive.
Not proud.
Ashamed.
“I’m sorry.”
I did not answer.
Not because I wanted to punish her.
Because I had not decided what that apology meant yet.
Gabriel spoke.
“The forensic audit is preliminary.”
Julian grabbed onto that.
“Yes.”
Exactly.
“Preliminary.”
He looked at Helena.
“So stop treating guesses like findings.”
Helena’s voice became colder.
“Your signature approves fourteen of the transfers.”
He froze.
Dalia closed her eyes.
I watched him.
“What did you think would happen?”
His face tightened.
“I kept the foundation alive.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You inherited something your mother built.”
“I expanded it.”
“You expanded fundraising.”
“Yes.”
“You also expanded the photography budget.”
His jaw tightened.
I continued.
“Alessia wanted hotel vouchers for parents sleeping in NICU chairs.”
“She did not create this organization so you could expense your affair.”
“Enough.”
“No.”
My voice rose for the first time.
“Not enough.”
Silence.
The baby shifted.
I put one hand over my stomach.
Gabriel did not touch me.
He waited.
Julian noticed.
His eyes moved from my hand to Gabriel.
Then his face twisted.
“Is it his?”
Again.
I almost laughed.
Dalia looked at him in disbelief.
“That is what you care about?”
Julian ignored her.
“Khloe.”
I stared.
“Yes.”
His face emptied.
There.
For all his public confidence—
some part of him had apparently hoped I was carrying someone else’s uncertainty.
Maybe donor conception.
Maybe a complicated situation.
Anything that did not directly prove the future he had convinced himself I could not have.
Gabriel’s child.
Conceived without fertility treatment.
After years of Julian watching me endure injections because he would not tell me his own genetic results.
“Yes,” I repeated.
“The baby is Gabriel’s.”
Julian’s eyes reddened.
He laughed once.
Painfully.
“Congratulations.”
I could not tell whether he meant it.
“Thank you.”
He looked away.
Dalia stared at him.
Then at me.
“You told me she couldn’t have children.”
My lungs stopped.
Julian froze.
Dalia continued.
“You told me that was why the marriage died.”
I looked at him.
Of course.
Of course he had given her the same story he gave reporters.
Poor Julian.
Faithful for years.
Wife unable to carry a pregnancy.
Marriage crushed by grief.
Eventually he found happiness elsewhere.
Dalia stood.
“You told me you stayed with her five years longer than you should have because you felt sorry for her.”
Something inside me broke quietly.
Gabriel’s face became hard.
I looked at Julian.
“Did you?”
He said nothing.
“Say it.”
“Khloe.”
“Did you tell her that?”
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Dalia started crying.
Angry tears.
“You knew your genetic condition contributed to the miscarriages.”
Julian turned.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you made both women believe she was the problem.”
He looked stunned.
Dalia continued.
“You made me feel superior to her.”
There.
That was the part most people never admitted.
She had enjoyed it.
Being chosen.
Being younger.
Being the woman Julian wanted after the tragic wife.
And Julian had manufactured the comparison.
Dalia wiped her face.
“You told me if we married, we could have children easily.”
Julian became still.
I saw it.
So did she.
“What?”
Dalia whispered.
“Can you?”
He looked away.
Her face collapsed.
“You don’t know.”
His genetic condition did not make fatherhood impossible.
But it could increase fertility challenges and risk of pregnancy loss.
With counseling and proper treatment, plenty of men with similar conditions became fathers.
But Julian had apparently told Dalia none of that.
He had simply moved the lie forward.
Different woman.
Same silence.
Dalia removed her engagement ring.
Julian stared.
“Don’t.”
She placed it on the table.
“I need to know what else is real.”
Then she walked out.
Julian did not follow.
He stood in the donor lounge with me, Gabriel, and Helena.
The ring glittered beneath the recessed lights.
For the first time, Julian looked small.
Not because Gabriel was richer.
Not because I was pregnant.
Because lies need participation.
And two women had just stopped participating at the same time.
Helena gathered the audit files.
“Julian.”
He looked up.
“The board will meet tomorrow at nine.”
“For what?”
“Emergency suspension.”
His face turned white.
“You can’t.”
“Yes.”
“I founded—”
“No.”
I interrupted.
“Your mother founded it.”
His eyes found mine.
That hurt.
Good.
Then Helena said—
“There is one more matter.”
Julian laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
She turned the tablet.
A scanned document appeared.
An old signature.
Henri Duval.
Julian’s father.
I recognized another name beneath it.
Dr. Marcel Avery.
And a line that made Julian stop breathing.
PATIENT-FACING RECORDS SHALL NOT INCLUDE PATERNAL GENETIC FINDING.
Julian stared.
Helena continued.
“The auditor found this attached to a payment record from Duval Family Holdings to Dr. Avery.”
He looked at me.
I looked back.
This was no longer my suspicion.
No longer a recovered lab result Julian could call fake.
It was written instruction.
His father had paid to bury the truth.
And Julian had inherited the lie.
May you like
The question now was—
what else had his family buried with it?
