Chapter 3: Everything She Thought She Owned
I sat in my car for eleven minutes.
I know because I watched the clock on the dashboard without actually seeing it.
The banking app was still open.
$214.
I scrolled to the transaction history.
The $31,000 had left in three separate transfers — $12,000, $11,000, $8,000 — spread across eight days so nothing would trigger an automatic alert.
Whoever had done this knew exactly how the system worked.
I called the bank's fraud line.
A woman answered on the second ring.
"I need to report unauthorized transfers from a joint account."
"Can I get your name and the last four digits of the account?"
I gave them.
I heard typing.
"I'm seeing three outgoing wire transfers over the past eight days.
All three were authorized using the secondary account holder's login credentials and confirmed with a one-time passcode sent to the registered mobile number."
"The secondary holder is my fiancé.
I never authorized those transfers."
More typing.
A pause.
"Ms.
Calloway, the passcodes were sent to a number ending in 4471.
Is that your number?"
"No.
My number ends in 8823."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"That number was added to the account as a secondary verification contact fourteen days ago.
The request came through online banking using your primary login."
My primary login.
My password.
My account.
I looked up through the windshield.
Corinne's front door was closed.
The curtain in the front window shifted slightly, then went still.
"I want to freeze the account," I said.
"Right now."
"I can do that.
I'll also flag this for our fraud investigation team.
You'll want to file a police report as well — I can give you a reference number to include."
I wrote the number on the back of a receipt from my glove box.
My handwriting was steadier than I expected.
I ended the call and opened my contacts.
My lawyer's name was near the top — Diane Marsh.
I'd used her twice before, once when I incorporated my agency, once when I bought the house.
She answered on the third ring.
"Ava.
It's been a while."
"Diane, I need you to tell me something.
If my fiancé's name is listed as a co-signatory on any of my business accounts or property documents — how would I find out?"
A short silence.
"Do you have reason to believe it might be?"
I thought about Corinne's voice in the driveway.
*Weston's name is on more than you know.*
"Yes," I said.
"I do."
"Come in tomorrow morning.
Bring everything — account statements, property deeds, your business registration, any documents Weston ever asked you to sign.
Everything."
"There's one more thing." I kept my voice flat.
"I'm four months pregnant.
And someone forged my signature on a wire transfer."
The silence this time was different.
"Ava.
Come in tonight."
I started the car.
As I pulled out of Corinne's street, my phone buzzed.
A text from Weston.
*You're being dramatic.
Call me when you've calmed down.*
I set the phone face-down on the passenger seat and drove.
Diane's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building downtown.
She met me in the lobby herself, which she had never done before.
She was sixty-one, wore her gray hair short, and had the kind of stillness that made other people in rooms speak more carefully.
She didn't hug me.
She looked at me the way a doctor looks at someone who has just walked in from outside in January without a coat.
"How are you feeling physically?"
"My back hurts.
She shoved me against a wall."
Diane's expression didn't change, but something behind her eyes did.
"She.
The mother."
"Corinne.
Yes."
"All right." She held the elevator door.
"Let's go upstairs."
We spread everything across her conference table.
Two hours.
She read every document twice.
I watched her face and learned nothing from it until she reached the third folder — the one containing my business registration and the amendment paperwork I'd signed eighteen months ago to update the agency's banking mandate.
She set it down.
She looked at me.
"Ava.
Did Weston ever tell you he was listed as a secondary authorized signatory on your agency's operating account?"
The room tilted slightly.
"No," I said.
"He is not on that account."
Diane turned the amendment page toward me and placed her finger beneath a signature line I had never seen before.
*Weston Hale.
Secondary Authorized Signatory.
Added by amendment.*
May you like
The signature above his name was mine.
I had never signed that page.
