4: 4
4
I stared at the date on the marriage certificate.
Three years ago, September twenty-sixth.
The exact same day I'd gotten my own.
That day, walking out of the registration office, I lost my composure in front of Beryl Matthews for the first time.
She wiped the sweat from my temple and smiled.
"Barret, from today on, we're a real family."
But it turned out everything about that day was fake.
Glen James opened the certificate, the smugness in his voice impossible to hide.
"That day, I made a bet with Beryl too."
"I bet that since you trusted her so much, you wouldn't spot that the clerk was a fake, wouldn't notice there was no real embossed seal on the papers."
"If you caught it, I'd leave her for good."
"If you didn't, she'd come with me to the real county records office and register."
He tapped the photo with a finger.
"And sure enough, you didn't catch it."
"After you went home clutching that fake certificate, Beryl came to pick me up."
"We made it before the office closed and got the real one."
I looked at Beryl Matthews.
"Is that true?"
She avoided my eyes.
"It was just a bet."
"I never meant to keep it from you this long."
Just a bet.
She lost, so she handed the role of husband, the one that should have been mine, over to Glen James.
And because I trusted her too much, I'd spent three whole years living inside a forged marriage.
Glen James added, smiling.
"Beryl said something else that day. That you're easy to fool."
"Just give you a hug, a few soft words, and you won't check anything too closely."
"Mr. Gilbert, you lost for three years and never even knew it."
"And now you still think you can take the Matthews shares with a fidelity agreement? Doesn't that strike you as funny?"
Lawyer Dickerson flipped the agreement open fast, his face darkening.
The first clause said it plainly.
The agreement takes effect from the day both parties are lawfully registered as married.
But Beryl Matthews and I had never been lawfully married.
So whether she registered with Glen James, whether she carried his child.
The agreement would never be triggered.
That forty-one percent stake, I couldn't touch a single share of it.
Beryl Matthews finally lifted her head again.
She smoothed her sleeve, and the certainty of the old Matthews Group chairwoman came back into her eyes.
"Barret, it's not too late to pull back."
"Restore the Gilbert funding. Withdraw the pressure on the board."
"And I can overlook the fact that you broke in tonight with a knife."
"From now on you move into that estate on the West Side, keep doing your design and your investments."
"As long as you behave, I won't let anyone look down on you."
I looked at her.
"And if I don't agree?"
Footsteps came from outside, even and measured.
Several officers walked in.
Glen James immediately pointed at the knife on the floor and the hair it had cut loose.
"Officers, it's him."
"He broke into my home with over a hundred people, held a knife to my face, and forced me to drink bubble tea that had been drugged."
"My wife is pregnant."
"He wants my whole family dead."
Beryl Matthews moved to stand beside Glen James.
"Officer, Barret Gilbert has been emotionally unstable lately."
"Causing a scene at the mall wasn't enough. Now he's brought people to our door at night."
"I'm afraid he'll hurt my husband and my child."
Husband.
She could finally call Glen James that out in the open.
The officers looked at the knife in my hand, then at the room full of bodyguards.
"Mr. Gilbert, please come with us and cooperate with the investigation."
