Chapter 4: What She Had Been Building
Gerald Foss put his hand on Isabella's arm.
"Don't say another word."
She shook him off.
"I know what I'm doing."
"Isabella—"
"He froze my accounts, Gerald.
I have forty dollars in cash and a credit card that doesn't work." She turned back to me.
"So yes.
We are going to talk about what I know."
My attorney, Daniel Reeves, set his pen down very deliberately.
"Mr.
Foss, I'd strongly advise you to get your client under control before she says something that changes the nature of this conversation entirely."
"She's not under control," Gerald said quietly.
He looked like a man watching a car roll toward a cliff.
Isabella pulled her silk robe tighter.
"Three months ago, Nathan, you moved fourteen million dollars through a holding company in Delaware that does not appear in any of your public filings.
I saw the wire confirmation.
It was sitting open on your desk." She paused.
"I took a photograph."
Nobody moved.
"I don't know what that money was for," she continued.
"But I know that your acquisition today involved some of the same counterparties.
And I know that regulators find that kind of thing very interesting."
Daniel looked at me.
I gave him nothing back.
"That photograph," I said, "shows a routine transfer to a legal escrow account used to protect the acquisition from early disclosure.
My compliance team filed the appropriate documentation six weeks ago.
It is not a secret.
It is paperwork." I picked up my phone and pulled up the filing reference number.
"Would you like Gerald to call the SEC himself, or should I save him the time?"
Isabella stared at the number on my screen.
"You're lying," she said.
"Daniel.
Is the Delaware filing in the evidence folder?"
Daniel reached into the back of the folder and produced a single printed page.
He placed it on the table without comment.
Isabella did not pick it up.
She did not need to.
The way her shoulders dropped told me she had already understood.
The photograph she had been saving for three months was worthless.
Gerald Foss put both hands flat on the table.
"I need five minutes alone with my client."
"You have two," one of the officers said.
They stepped into the hallway.
Through the kitchen doorway I could hear Gerald's voice, low and urgent, and Isabella's responses getting shorter.
Maya had not moved from my side.
She was watching the hallway with the careful attention of a child who has learned to read a room before anyone else in it.
"Daddy," she said quietly.
"Yes."
"She has a phone that isn't her regular one.
She keeps it in the lining of her winter coat.
The gray one in the hall closet."
I looked down at her.
"I saw her put it there two weeks ago.
She didn't know I was on the stairs."
Daniel was already on his feet.
The officer nearest the hallway moved to the closet before Gerald and Isabella came back into the kitchen.
By the time they returned, the gray coat was on the table and the lining had been carefully opened.
Inside was a second phone.
Black.
No case.
Screen locked.
Isabella stopped in the doorway.
"That is my personal property," she said.
"It is," the officer agreed.
"And with your consent, or a warrant, we can find out what's on it."
Gerald Foss looked at the phone on the table.
Then he looked at Isabella.
And for the first time since he had arrived, he said nothing at all.
Isabella's eyes moved to Maya.
My daughter did not look away.
"How long?" Isabella asked.
Her voice was almost quiet enough to sound human.
"How long have you been watching me?"
Maya thought about it for a moment.
May you like
"Since the third week," she said.
"When you crossed out my lunch."
