Chapter 6 - OLIVIA KNEW THE PRISON STORY WAS FALSEOlivia asked to meet me.
I agreed.
Public place.
Lawyers aware.
She arrived in the same beige cardigan she wore the day I came home.
I hated that cardigan irrationally.
She ordered tea.
Then said:
“Arthur panicked.”
“Did you know I wasn’t in prison?”
She looked away.
That was enough.
“How long?”
“From the beginning.”
I almost smiled.
Not because it was funny.
Because the answer finally removed the last possible excuse.
“You helped him lie to my father.”
“I helped keep Thomas calm.”
“You told him I was detained.”
“Arthur had already told him.”
“And you reinforced it.”
She stared at her cup.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the Hanover closing was important.”
There it was.
No family language.
Money.
Deal.
Control.
“How did humiliating my father help Hanover?”
Olivia looked ashamed for half a second.
“It didn’t.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Her face hardened defensively.
“Thomas kept saying the situation was Arthur’s fault.”
“So you made him scrub floors?”
“No one forced him.”
That technical answer disgusted me.
“You kicked a rag away from a sixty-seven-year-old man while telling him his daughter was imprisoned.”
Olivia closed her eyes.
“I was angry.”
“At whom?”
“You.”
I stared.
“I wasn’t even there.”
“Exactly.”
That surprised me.
She continued.
“You left Arthur alone with the biggest deal of his life.”
“I had a work assignment.”
“For seven weeks.”
“It was supposed to be twelve.”
“He needed you.”
“He needed my money.”
“He needed his wife.”
“And because I wasn’t physically available, he forged me?”
Olivia flinched.
“No.”
“Then stop building the road back to me.”
She became quiet.
Then admitted something important.
Arthur had first proposed telling Thomas I was facing “serious legal complications” because he needed my father to approve the extraordinary trust distribution quickly.
Olivia objected at first.
Then Arthur explained:
Without capital, Hanover dies.
Investors sue over expenses.
His reputation collapses.
Olivia’s $750,000 could be tied up.
Everyone loses.
That phrase.
Everyone loses.
Except the person whose money they intended to use.
Apparently I did not count as everyone.
Olivia also showed me the draft message Arthur first wrote to Thomas.
It did not say prison.
It said:
Genevieve is involved in a confidential regulatory matter abroad and needs immediate liquidity.
Thomas pressed for details.
The story escalated.
Detention.
Passport seized.
Restricted communications.
Eventually “prison” became the shorthand Olivia herself used when taunting him.
Not because Arthur had carefully planned that exact lie from day one.
Because lies expand when reality keeps asking follow-up questions.
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That made the scheme more believable.
And uglier.
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