Chapter 18
Then he took out his phone and called his attorney.
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## CHAPTER 8: What Lily Drew
The financial crimes division executed a preliminary asset freeze on the Meridian Trust account and the Walton Holdings Eastern Division subsidiary accounts at eleven seventeen that same morning.
Victor's attorney managed to delay the full warrant by six days.
It didn't matter.
Patricia had already copied everything.
The secondary authorization trail, the eleven years of transfers, the Delaware registration documents, and the paper trail connecting the fake Harold Walton credentials to a device registered to Victor's home address.
Harold was present when the investigator called Martin to confirm the freeze.
He was sitting in the conference room with Anna and Lily.
Lily was drawing.
Martin came in, set his phone on the table, and said: "It's done.
For now."
Anna closed her eyes.
Harold put his hand on the table between them, palm up, and after a moment, Anna put her hand in it.
Lily looked up from her drawing.
"Is the bad man going to go away?"
"He's going to have a great many people asking him a great many questions," Martin said, which was attorney for yes.
Lily considered this and went back to her drawing.
It took six more weeks for the formal charges to be filed.
Harold spent those six weeks doing three things: working with Patricia's team and the financial crimes investigators, learning his daughter again, and finding an apartment two streets from his house with a bedroom that had enough wall space for all of Lily's drawings.
The apartment had a small yard.
May you like
Lily stood in the middle of it on the first afternoon and turned in a slow circle with her arms out, checking the size of it.
Then she said, "We've never had a yard before," in a voice that had no complaint in it, only the factual wonder of someone encountering something they had not expected to be real.
