Chapter 6 - THE SIGNATURE I NEVER GAVE THEM
I put the call on speaker.
Not because I wanted drama.
Because I was finished having people rewrite conversations after they ended.
My attorney, Caroline Wells, explained what she had found.
A rights-transfer agreement had been submitted with one design registration.
According to the document, I had assigned full commercial rights to Vale & Hart Atelier in exchange for a five-thousand-dollar payment.
There was only one problem.
I had never seen the agreement.
Never signed it.
Never received five thousand dollars.
Caroline had already checked.
No payment from Vale & Hart appeared in my accounts.
Natalie sat down.
For the first time that day, she looked genuinely afraid.
Brooke stared at her.
“What did you do?”
Natalie snapped:
“Nothing.”
Caroline continued.
“The signature appears to be digital.”
Richard leaned toward my phone.
“Can you identify the originating account?”
“We’re working on it.”
Natalie stood.
“This is absurd.”
Richard looked at her.
“Then it should be easy to resolve.”
Her breathing changed.
I knew that expression.
I had seen it every time something in the studio went wrong and Natalie needed ten seconds to decide which subordinate would absorb it.
This time, there was nowhere to redirect.
Then Brooke said:
“The five thousand.”
Natalie turned.
“What?”
Brooke’s face changed.
“Oh my God.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The bonus ledger.”
Brooke rushed toward the office.
Natalie tried to stop her.
Richard blocked her.
Brooke returned with an accounting binder.
She flipped through several pages.
Then stopped.
A payment of five thousand dollars had been issued.
Not to me.
To a vendor called Hart Creative Services.
Richard frowned.
“That isn’t my company.”
I knew the name.
My stomach tightened.
Hart Creative Services had belonged to my mother.
Elaine Hart.
She closed it before she died.
I hadn’t heard the name in four years.
“How did you get that account information?”
Natalie looked at me.
“I didn’t.”
“Brooke?”
“No.”
Caroline heard everything over speaker.
“Emily, hold on.”
Keyboard sounds came through.
Then she returned.
“Hart Creative Services was reactivated eight months ago.”
I stopped breathing.
“By who?”
“The registered manager is not you.”
Richard stood.
“Who?”
Caroline answered.
“Martin Hartwell.”
Natalie’s silent business partner.
The man who rarely visited the studio.
The man whose shortened surname had become half the company name.
And suddenly, the theft of my work no longer looked like two cruel women taking advantage of a junior assistant.
Someone had deliberately revived my dead mother’s company.
Someone had routed a fake payment through it.
Someone had used that payment to create the appearance that I sold my rights.
Richard stared at me.
I stared at him.
May you like
Then he said the one thing neither of us wanted to consider.
“Martin knew your mother.”
