Chapter 7: The Account She Thought He'd Never Find
Monday came.
Ethan sat across from Grace in her office on the fourteenth floor and signed four documents without reading them twice.
He had already read them twice at home, alone, the night before, with a glass of water and no music and every light in the room on.
Grace signed where indicated as the filing attorney.
Her assistant witnessed both signatures.
The documents went into a courier envelope at 9:47 in the morning.
By noon, they had been received by the civil court clerk's office.
By two in the afternoon, Vivienne's attorney had called Grace's direct line.
Grace took the call on speaker.
Ethan sat in the chair across from her desk and looked out at the skyline and said nothing.
"My client is prepared to discuss a resolution," Vivienne's attorney said.
His name was Fitch, and he sounded like a man who had been given bad news very recently and was being professional about it.
"There is nothing to discuss," Grace said pleasantly.
"The filing speaks for itself."
"She's willing to return the funds."
"All of them."
A pause.
"There may be a small portion that has—"
"All of them, Mr.
Fitch.
With interest calculated from the date of the first transfer." Grace looked at a document on her desk.
"The nineteenth of April, fourteen months ago."
Another pause.
Longer.
"My client would also like to make clear that she did not anticipate the fraud characterization," Fitch said.
"She believes this is a significant overreach—"
"Her belief is noted," Grace said.
"Our position stands."
The call ended.
Ethan turned away from the window.
"She'll pay it back," Grace said.
"The criminal exposure is too significant for her to do anything else.
Fitch knows it.
She knows it."
"I know," Ethan said.
"Is that enough?"
He thought about the chapel.
The way the transcript had looked in her hands.
The way her face had changed when she read it — not with guilt but with recalculation.
"It's sufficient," he said.
Grace nodded.
She pulled a folder from the side of her desk and slid it across to him.
"This came in Friday afternoon," she said.
"After you left.
I held it until now because I wanted you to have a clear head."
He opened the folder.
Inside was a single printed page.
A bank record.
An account in Vivienne's name that Grace's financial investigator had located three weeks earlier — not one of the joint accounts, but a private one, opened four years ago, two years before Ethan had proposed.
The account had received regular deposits.
Small ones at first.
Then larger.
The name on the source transfers was not Daniel Holt.
It was a company name.
Three words.
Ethan read them twice.
He looked up.
"What is this?" he said.
Grace folded her hands on the desk.
"That," she said, "is the part that took us longer to find."
Ethan looked at the company name again.
He knew that name.
He had seen it on a contract.
Two years ago.
A consulting firm his company had briefly considered engaging before deciding against it.
"She had access," he said slowly.
"Before we were even serious.
She already had access to—"
"To your business financials," Grace said.
"Through a third party who had been feeding her information since before the relationship was formalized."
He set the page down on the desk.
"Who is the third party?" he said.
Grace's expression shifted.
Not alarm — something more careful than alarm.
"That," she said, "is the part I need you to sit with for a moment before you react."
He looked at her.
She slid one more document across the desk.
He looked at the name at the top of the page.
His hands went flat on the desk.
He didn't pick up the phone.
He didn't stand up.
He sat very still, and outside the window the city went on exactly as it always had, indifferent and enormous and not at all concerned with what had just landed in front of him.
May you like
The name at the top of the page was Marcus Hale.
His best man.
