Chapter 25: The Interview Trap
The journalist chose a quiet café with glass walls, and Daniel noticed that first because exposed rooms had begun to feel like traps.
It looked informal, but every seat was visible from the street, where phones could rise without permission.
He arrived ten minutes early because lateness now looked like guilt.
He had shaved in the hotel sink and worn the least creased shirt, the one Gloria had not bothered to fold before she threw him out.
The collar still refused to sit properly, and he told himself it made him look exhausted, not poor.
The journalist stood when he entered.
She was polite, almost kind, which made Daniel relax too quickly; predators had taught him nothing about professional patience.
No camera crew waited, no bright lamp, no producer with a headset.
Only a small recorder sat on the table beside two coffees.
Daniel liked the recorder because it felt old-fashioned and controllable, like evidence from a world before screenshots learned to travel faster than regret.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she said. “People have heard one side.”
“That is why I came.”
He sat down and placed both hands around the cup.
Warmth helped. Performance needed props.
The journalist began softly.
“You said Evelyn’s family forced you out of your life. What did you mean by that?”
Daniel had prepared this.
He spoke about lawyers, sudden restrictions, lost access, and the shock of sleeping in a hotel while his wife’s foundation fed the news cycle.
He did not say he had slept there because Gloria had thrown him out.
He made himself sound bewildered, not beaten.
The journalist nodded.
“When you say access was removed, do you mean access to assets registered to you, or assets you were allowed to use?”
Daniel hesitated, and the hesitation answered before he did.
“Assets I used.”
She looked at her notes. “So not registered to you, legally.”
The first cut was clean enough that Daniel almost missed the blood.
He laughed lightly. “Marriage is more complicated than paperwork.”
“Yet your public post relied on the idea that paperwork was being used against you.”
Daniel’s smile tightened.
On the café television behind her, a business segment mentioned Luminara’s accessibility platform and early hospital demand, with partner pledges rising again.
He tried not to look, but Evelyn’s name crossed the screen in white letters above a number he could not afford to imagine.
The journalist noticed the glance and let it sit there.
Then she took a sip of coffee. “Let us talk about Gloria Marlowe, and the spending records attached to her address.”
His fingers stiffened around the cup.
“She is irrelevant.” “Is she?”
The journalist slid a printed page across the table.
The paper was plain, which made it worse; plain paper never tried to entertain anyone.
Gloria’s sofa. Gloria’s lamp. Gloria’s hotel stay. Small luxuries, all suddenly bright under legal glass.
“Did Evelyn know these purchases were for Gloria?”
“I handled household arrangements.”
Daniel looked towards the glass wall.
“For your neighbour’s flat?” she asked, and the question made the café window feel suddenly full of faces.
Two people outside had slowed down, and one lifted a phone.
The journalist did not turn. She already knew.
“You said your apology was sincere. Why did you delete it?”
“Because people twisted it.”
“You never once said Evelyn’s name.”
Daniel swallowed. “I was trying to protect her privacy.”
She placed down the rain photograph. Evelyn’s cane behind the locked door, Daniel’s hand on the latch, no lawyer needed.
“Was protecting her privacy why you left her cane inside?”
The café noise thinned, and Daniel had no sentence left that did not confess something or make the photograph worse.
Then his phone buzzed: Luminara board call scheduled. Subject: Competency concerns raised by Mr Ward, the lie he had thrown at Evelyn returning with minutes attached.