Chapter 3: What the Drive Contained
My cousin's wedding ended at midnight.
Marcus and Chloe left an hour early.
Julian and I stayed until the last dance, Emma asleep against his shoulder with her dark curls pressed against his jacket.
On the drive home, he said nothing about Marcus until Emma was safely transferred to her car seat and the partition between us and the driver was closed.
"The phone call was from Daniel," Julian said.
"My lead attorney on the acquisition."
"What did he find?"
"Enough." Julian looked out at the highway.
"But I want to hear it from you first.
What's on that drive, Evelyn?"
I'd carried that drive for five years without opening it once.
Not because I was afraid of what was on it.
Because I had never needed it.
I had built everything I needed without it.
"During our marriage, Marcus ran two sets of books," I said.
"One for his investors.
One for himself.
I found the real one by accident — I was looking for a tax document and opened the wrong folder.
I copied everything before he came home."
Julian was quiet for a moment.
"How much are we talking about?"
"Over three years, he diverted roughly four million dollars from his investors into a private account.
Small amounts.
Structured to avoid reporting thresholds.
Very careful." I paused.
"Not careful enough."
Julian turned to look at me.
"You've known this for five years."
"Yes."
"And you never used it."
"I didn't need to," I said.
"I just needed to leave."
He was quiet again.
The city lights moved past the window.
"Daniel found irregularities in the current financials," Julian said finally.
"The same pattern.
Smaller amounts, but the same structure.
He's still doing it, Evelyn.
To his current investors."
The car was very still.
"Then it isn't just history," I said.
"No.
It isn't."
I thought about the people on the other side of those accounts.
Retirement funds.
Small business owners.
People who had trusted Marcus Mercer because he wore the right suit and said the right things.
"What does Daniel want to do?" I asked.
"He wants to halt the acquisition and refer the matter to the SEC." Julian paused.
"But he needs the historical records to establish the pattern.
Without them, Marcus's attorneys will argue it's an isolated accounting error.
A fine, maybe.
Nothing more."
I looked at Julian.
"And with them?"
"With them, it becomes a pattern of deliberate fraud spanning nearly a decade." He held my gaze.
"That's a different conversation entirely."
Emma stirred in her car seat and settled again.
"I'll get you the drive," I said.
Julian reached across and took my hand.
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
What I didn't know — what neither of us knew yet — was that Marcus had not gone home after leaving the wedding.
May you like
He had gone somewhere else entirely.
And by the time we pulled into our driveway, he had already made a phone call that would reach me before morning.
