Chapter 5: The Confession Daniel Didn't Mean to Give
Daniel Marsh's office was on the third floor of a building near the courthouse.
Simone had been his client for two years.
She had referred him three friends.
She had trusted him with the most private financial details of her marriage, her accounts, her plans.
She had sat across from him a dozen times in the chair by the window and believed everything he told her.
She sat in that chair now.
The folder Eleanor had given her was in her bag.
She had not taken it out.
Daniel came in looking tired.
He set a coffee on his own desk and did not offer her one.
"Simone," he said.
"I'm glad you came."
"Are you."
He sat down.
He had a prepared quality about him this morning — careful posture, careful voice, the look of a man who had spent the night deciding what to say.
"I owe you an explanation," he said.
"Yes."
"The asset transfers — Calvin's side moved faster than I anticipated.
By the time I realized the full picture, the window had already closed.
I should have told you earlier.
That's on me."
Simone looked at him.
"Is that the explanation?" she said.
He shifted slightly.
"It's the relevant part."
"What about the holding company?" she said.
His eyes moved.
Just slightly.
Just for a second.
"I don't know what you mean."
"The company registered in my maiden name," she said.
"With my mother's address.
The one that received two hundred and thirty thousand dollars over seven months."
Daniel said nothing.
"From your personal account," she said.
He put his coffee down.
"Where did you get that information?"
"Does it matter?"
"Simone —"
"Did you open a company in my name without telling me?"
He stood up.
He moved to the window, which is what people do when they need a moment and there is nowhere else to go.
"It was temporary," he said.
"I needed a vehicle for —"
"A vehicle," she said.
"It was a short-term arrangement.
The funds were going to be moved back before any of this —"
"Before any of this what?" she said.
"Before the divorce?
Before I found out?
Before Calvin's attorneys showed it to the financial crimes division?"
Daniel turned from the window.
The prepared look was gone.
"He hasn't filed," Daniel said.
"If he had filed, I would have been contacted."
"Not yet," Simone said.
The two words landed exactly where she meant them to.
Daniel sat back down.
He put both hands flat on the desk.
He looked like a man who had just understood something he had been hoping to avoid understanding.
"You need to tell me," Simone said, "exactly what you did.
All of it.
Not the version you prepared this morning.
The true version."
A long silence.
"I borrowed against projected settlement figures," he said finally.
"Yours wasn't the only case.
There were four clients.
I needed liquidity.
The intention was always to repay before —"
"Four clients," she said.
He didn't answer.
"You stole from four of your own clients," she said, "and you used my name to do part of it."
He looked at his hands on the desk.
"How much of my case was real?" she said.
"The valuations.
The asset searches.
Did you actually look, or did you tell me what I wanted to hear so I would sign and settle quickly and you could close the file?"
He didn't answer.
Which was its own answer.
Simone stood.
She reached into her bag and placed the folder on his desk.
"I'm going to need you to write down everything you just told me," she said.
"Dates, amounts, account numbers, the names of the other clients.
Everything."
He looked at the folder.
"And if I don't?"
"Then Calvin's attorneys file tomorrow morning," she said.
"And your name is on the front page of it."
She picked up her coat from the back of the chair.
"I'll wait outside for twenty minutes," she said.
"That should be enough time."
She walked out and closed the door behind her.
She stood in the hallway, her coat over her arm, and did not look at the clock.
May you like
She did not need to.
At eleven minutes, the door opened and Daniel's assistant stepped out, holding a sealed envelope.
