“Of course,” Bruno said, walking over to his desk. He sat down in his leather chair, entirely unaware that beneath his feet lay the evidence of his own undoing. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of documents—documents that looked identical to the ones I had just hidden.
“Valerie, come sit down,” Bruno said, his voice dripping with false warmth. “Arthur here has the paperwork for our mortgage restructuring. It’s going to save us nearly a thousand dollars a month. I just need your signature on the authorization pages, and we’re good to go.”
He flipped to the back of the document, exposing only the signature lines. The rest of the pages were cleverly folded back, obscured by a heavy binder clip. He slid a sleek, gold Montblanc pen across the desk toward me.
“Just sign right here, honey. Where the yellow ‘X’ is.”
