Chapter 15 - The Mistress Reaches Out
Two days after the explosive meeting at the law firm, I received a private text message on my personal phone.
Ms. Rowan. My name is Ivy Bell. I was... the woman in the hotel room with Grant. I know you hate me, but I have something of Grant's that you desperately need to see. Please meet me. I’m scared.
I stared at the screen for a long time.
My initial instinct was to delete the message and block the number. The police had already confirmed that Ivy Bell was not facing criminal charges in connection with Grant's death; she had simply been a young woman caught in his orbit. I owed her nothing.
Yet, something about the tone of the message sparked my analytical curiosity.
An hour later, I pulled up to a quiet, rainy waterfront café on the edge of the city.
Sitting in a corner booth, shivering despite her oversized wool coat, was Ivy Bell. She was twenty-four years old, pale, with dark circles under her wide, terrified eyes. She looked nothing like the glamorous, dangerous mistress I had pictured in my mind. She just looked like a child who had played with matches and accidentally set her world on fire.
I sat down across from her without saying a word.
Ivy flinched, clutching her paper coffee cup with both hands. "Thank you for coming, Ms. Rowan."
"You have five minutes, Ivy," I said, my tone matter-of-fact. "Say what you brought me here to say."
"I... I am so sorry," Ivy whispered, tears instantly brimming in her eyes. "I swear on my life, I didn't know he was married when I met him. Grant told me he was completely single. He told me he was a venture capitalist who lived alone in the hills."
"And when you found out he was married?" I asked smoothly.
"He lied to me again," she said, her voice shaking. "He told me you were an abusive, controlling ex-wife who lived abroad and was using fake legal contracts to keep him broke. He made you sound like a monster. He promised me he was working on a way to finally escape you."
I let out a soft, dry laugh. "Grant was very good at telling stories."
"I know that now," Ivy said, pulling a small, sleek black smartphone wrapped in a plastic bag from her coat pocket. "Grant dropped this under the bed in the hotel suite the night he died. The police didn't find it because it had slipped into a tear in the dust ruffle. I found it when I went back to get my purse before the paramedics arrived."
I looked at the phone. It was an encrypted satellite device—the kind used by dark-web brokers and high-level corporate spies.
"Why didn't you give this to the police?" I asked.
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"Because I unlocked it using his birthdate," Ivy whispered, her eyes wide with terror. "And when I opened the messages... I saw what he was planning to do to you."
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