Chapter 5: What Arthur Did to the Books
Patricia's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building in downtown Boston, with a view of the harbor that I barely registered.
Arthur Sr.
was already seated when I arrived.
He was seventy-one years old and looked, that morning, like a man who had not slept.
His hands were folded on the table in front of him.
He stood when I walked in, which he had never done before in all the years I had known him.
"Mariana."
I sat down across from him without speaking.
He looked at Patricia, then back at me.
"I'll say what I came to say and then you can decide what to do with it." He unfolded his hands.
"Three years ago, Arthur began moving money out of the company.
Not large amounts at once.
Small transfers.
Consulting fees paid to a company that doesn't exist.
Equipment purchases with no corresponding inventory.
I noticed it fourteen months ago."
"You noticed it fourteen months ago," I said, "and said nothing."
"He told me it was a tax strategy.
I wanted to believe him." He looked at his hands.
"I was wrong to believe him."
"How much?"
"Patricia has the figures.
But the short answer is that the transfers were structured to reduce the assessed value of the company.
Your forty-three percent." He paused.
"If the company's value is artificially low at the time of the divorce settlement, your share is worth significantly less."
Patricia slid a folder across the table to me.
"We're looking at approximately $2.3 million in suppressed valuation over thirty months."
The number sat in the air.
"He was doing this while we were still married," I said.
"Yes," Arthur Sr.
said.
"While I was still running the distribution contracts."
"Yes."
"While I was still the reason those two plants were profitable."
Arthur Sr.
didn't answer that.
He didn't need to.
I opened the folder.
The transfers were listed in clean columns.
Dates, amounts, destination accounts.
One company name appeared repeatedly as the recipient: Meridian Consulting Group LLC.
"Who owns Meridian?" I asked.
Patricia turned one page.
"Diego."
Arthur's younger brother.
The one who had always despised me.
The one who had never received shares because he couldn't be trusted with money.
Arthur had found a way to give Diego money anyway.
Through me.
I closed the folder.
"Arthur Sr.," I said.
"Why are you here?
You could have stayed out of this.
Arthur is your son."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Because Carmen showed me the second paternity test last night.
The one for Maya." He looked up.
"My son walked away from his own child.
Knowingly.
While hiding money that belonged to her mother." His voice didn't break, but it thinned.
"I have four granddaughters.
Whatever I failed to say for sixteen years, I am saying now."
Patricia leaned forward.
"With Arthur Sr.'s testimony and the financial records, we have grounds to reopen the divorce settlement.
Fraudulent asset concealment during proceedings is actionable.
We can also pursue Diego for his role in the transfers."
"Arthur will fight it," I said.
"He will," Patricia agreed.
"Which is why I need you to understand what the next few months are going to look like."
I thought about Chloe's face outside the courthouse.
The careful way she had watched me on the plane.
The question she had asked her father that he hadn't answered.
"Tell me what I need to do," I said.
Patricia opened her own folder.
"First, we file to reopen the settlement.
That gets filed today." She turned a page.
"Second, we submit the financial records to the court along with Arthur Sr.'s sworn statement.
Third—" She paused.
"Third, we wait for Arthur to respond.
And he will respond."
My phone buzzed on the table.
I turned it over.
A text from an unknown number: *You should have stayed in Chicago.
This isn't over.*
I showed it to Patricia without a word.
She photographed it with her own phone.
"That goes into the file," she said.
"Don't delete it."
May you like
I set the phone face-down.
Arthur had found out we were moving.
