Chapter 6: Selina Strikes Back
Rowan stared at the signature until the screen dimmed.
Then he looked at Phoebe. “Maybe we should stop for tonight.”
Leo slept in the bassinet, his tiny hands curled beneath his chin. The house was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the ragged breath Rowan tried to hide.
“Stop what?” Phoebe asked.
“Going through everything. Calling the bank. Whatever else you’re thinking of doing.” He rubbed his palm over his mouth. “We just had a baby. We’re exhausted. We could wait until we know more.”
“We know enough to keep looking.”
“Phoebe—”
“You said you’d stop making decisions on my behalf.”
His eyes flicked toward the invoice. “I’m not trying to—”
“You’re asking me to pause because the truth is uncomfortable.”
He looked away. His shoulders tightened, but he didn’t argue. That silence didn’t make the request harmless. It only left her to carry the choice again.
Gideon stood near the window in his old gray coat, quiet as he’d been through the whole exchange. Phoebe felt the steadiness of him without looking. She didn’t need him to speak for her.
Rowan picked up his keys.
“I’m going to talk to Mom.”
Phoebe waited for him to ask her to come. He didn’t.
“Go, then,” she said.
The front door shut behind him. Leo stirred, gave a soft squeak, and settled again.
Phoebe turned back to the laptop. Her heart beat too fast for the room’s stillness. She opened the account activity and saved a fresh copy of everything she could see: the invoice, the transfer details, the timestamps. Then she sent the files to a private drive Rowan couldn’t access.
Gideon shifted beside the window.
“Do you want me to take Leo?” he asked.
“No. Stay with him.” She swallowed. “Please.”
“I’m here.”
The words didn’t fix anything, but she let them reach her.
A sharp alert sounded from her phone.
Phoebe glanced down. A new request had been made to move money out of the joint account.
For a moment, all she heard was the small, even hiss of Leo’s breathing. Then the numbers on the screen pulled into focus. The request was still pending. No money had moved—but someone had tried.
Her fingers went cold.
She saved the alert, including the time and the account details. Then she called the bank’s fraud line and asked them to block outgoing transfers while she secured the account. The representative’s voice was calm and practiced. Phoebe’s was not.
“Yes, I understand the account is shared,” she said. “I’m asking you to prevent any new transfer until both account holders can verify access.”
She stayed on the line, answered what she had to, and watched the status change. When it was done, she set her phone down with both hands.
The money hadn’t vanished. It was still there.
But someone had reached for it.
When Rowan came back, the sky beyond the windows had darkened. His face was flushed from the cold, or the argument, or both. He shut the door carefully, as if making noise would wake Leo—or break something else.
Phoebe didn’t get up.
“Did you talk to her?” she asked.
He nodded, then glanced at her phone.
“What happened?”
“Someone tried to move money from the joint account.”
His expression sharpened. “Did it go through?”
“No. I stopped it.”
He let out a breath that seemed to hurt on the way out. “You locked the account?”
“I secured it. The request is preserved.”
“Mom called me before I got there,” he said. “She knew I was coming.”
Phoebe waited.
“She said you were using Gideon’s money to punish her. That you were going to take Leo away and make sure she never saw him.”
A pulse of anger rose through Phoebe, hot and immediate. Leo’s sleeping face remained turned toward her, his mouth faintly open.
“I haven’t said she can’t see him,” Phoebe said. “I haven’t made that decision.”
“I know.”
“Does she?”
Rowan looked down at his keys, still clenched in one fist. “She said she knows what your father can do. That you can make her look like a thief before she has a chance to explain.”
“Then she can explain the transfers.”
“She didn’t want to talk about them.” His voice broke at the edge, then steadied. “She wanted me to say I didn’t know anything was wrong.”
Phoebe felt the space between them change. Not close. Not healed. Just clearer.
“What did you tell her?”
He didn’t answer quickly enough.
“Rowan.”
“I told her I couldn’t say that.” His jaw flexed. “I know about the payments. I approved two. I hid them from you.”
“You did.”
“I know.”
He sat on the far end of the sofa, leaving a cushion between them. For once, he didn’t reach for her hand or ask her to help him feel better about what he’d done.
“She said if I kept backing you, I’d lose my family,” he said.
Phoebe looked at him. “Which family?”
His face crumpled for half a second before he controlled it. His eyes went to the bassinet.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what she said. That I’d lose you and Leo. That Gideon would make it easy to cut me out.”
“She doesn’t get to decide what I do with Leo. Neither does my father.”
“I know.” He looked at her then. “But I was afraid she could make it sound like I’d helped you do that.”
Phoebe heard the fear in his voice. She also heard the old habit beneath it—the instinct to let Selina define what was happening, then obey before he could be blamed. She understood the fear. She would not inherit its consequences.
“Your mother is the one making choices right now,” she said. “I’m not responsible for the story she tells herself about them.”
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his keys. “She knew about the transfer attempt.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t even reached her door when she called.” His gaze dropped. “She told me to stop you before you made this worse.”
“By denying what you know?”
He nodded.
Phoebe turned her phone facedown on the table. She had done what she could for the account. The next thing was not hers to do for him.
“You’ll have to decide what you’re willing to say when she asks again.”
“She already asked.”
“And you answered.”
“I did.”
She searched his face for certainty and found only strain. That was not a promise. It was still more than he had offered before.
His shoulders slumped. “There’s something else.”
Phoebe kept her voice even. “What?”
He glanced at the laptop, where the invoice remained open. For an instant, the room seemed to tilt toward it: her name beneath the looping mark, the name she had not written.
“Mom said the signature doesn’t prove what you think it proves,” Rowan said.
May you like
Phoebe’s fingers curled against her knee. “Why?”
He shook his head. “She said she has something that could make it look real.”
