Chapter 4: What Patricia Knew
Patricia Voss met me in the kitchen of the safe house at half past nine.
She was small — mid-fifties, reading glasses pushed up into gray-streaked hair, a folder of papers held tightly against her chest like she was afraid someone might take it from her in the car ride over.
She had worked as Daniel's private financial administrator for eleven years before he let her go without warning or reference fourteen months ago.
Fourteen months ago.
The same week I had first started to notice things didn't add up.
My attorney, Grace Ellison, was already seated at the table when Patricia came in.
Grace had driven over the moment I called her from the SUV.
She was fifty-three, unhurried, and had the kind of stillness that made other lawyers nervous in depositions.
She nodded at Patricia and said nothing, just slid a glass of water across the table.
Patricia sat down.
She put her folder on the table but didn't open it yet.
"I signed a non-disclosure agreement when he terminated me," she said.
"I had it reviewed two weeks ago.
It doesn't hold.
It was improperly executed." She looked at me directly.
"I want you to know I'm not here because of what he did to me.
I'm here because of what he did to your daughter's trust fund."
The room went very quiet.
"Lily's trust," I said.
"Yes." She opened the folder.
"The Lily Hargrove-Cassel Educational and Care Trust, established by your father's estate before he passed.
It was structured to be managed independently, outside of any marital asset.
Your father was very specific about that." She turned a page toward me.
"Eighteen months ago, Daniel had his name added as a secondary trustee.
I flagged it.
He told me it was routine.
Three weeks later, he made the first transfer."
Grace leaned forward.
"How much?"
"The first one was forty thousand.
Small enough not to trigger an automatic review." Patricia pulled out another page.
"The second was sixty.
Then ninety.
Then two transfers in the same week that together totaled just under two hundred thousand." She looked up.
"He moved a total of four hundred and twelve thousand dollars out of your daughter's trust over the course of seven months.
The account currently holds less than thirty thousand."
I didn't move.
I had known Daniel was hiding things.
I had known about the accounts he'd quietly restructured, the properties transferred out of our joint holdings into a shell company registered in his sister's name.
I had known about the woman he had been seeing for eleven months — a fact my investigator had documented with photographs, hotel records, and two receipts for jewelry I had never received.
I had not known about Lily's trust.
"He stole from her," I said.
Not a question.
"Yes," Patricia said.
"He did."
The word sat in the room like something dropped from a great height.
Grace was already writing.
She didn't look up.
"Patricia, can you provide original documentation for all transfers?"
"Every one.
Bank records, authorization signatures, correspondence.
Including the email chain where he told me to process the second transfer and not to mention it in the quarterly summary."
Grace stopped writing.
"He put that in writing?"
"He thought I was loyal." Patricia's expression didn't change.
"I was.
Right up until he walked me out of the building with a cardboard box and didn't even shake my hand."
I looked at the page in front of me.
The column of numbers.
The date of the first transfer.
Lily had just turned four.
She had been at a birthday party that afternoon, running through a garden in a yellow dress, laughing at nothing in particular.
"I want everything," I said.
"Every document you have."
"It's all here." Patricia slid the folder across to Grace.
"And there's one more thing." She reached into her bag and placed a USB drive on the table.
"Before he terminated me, I made copies of the digital records.
Everything that was on the system he deleted the following week."
Grace picked up the drive and looked at it for a long moment.
Then she looked at me.
"Chloe," she said carefully.
"This changes the filing."
"I know."
"We're no longer talking about civil divorce proceedings."
"I know, Grace."
She held my gaze.
"Are you ready for what that means?"
I thought about Lily asleep upstairs.
Her hand against my collarbone.
The way she had asked if Daddy was coming and then, when I didn't say yes, had asked nothing more.
"He stole from a five-year-old child," I said.
"His own daughter.
So yes.
I'm ready."
Grace set the drive down on top of the folder.
"Then we start first thing in the morning."
I was almost out of the kitchen doorway when Patricia spoke again.
"Mrs.
Hargrove." I turned.
"His sister knew.
She's the one who suggested he add himself to the trust.
I have the email."
May you like
My hand tightened on the doorframe.
"Put it on top," I said.
