Chapter 5: What the Accounts Were Hiding
My attorney's name was Carol Vance.
She had handled my legal affairs for nineteen years and she did not waste words.
"Send me the transfer logs, the IP records, and the handwritten note," she said.
"Tonight.
Don't confront either of them again until I've looked at everything."
"Daniel is my son."
"I understand that.
Send me the documents."
I sent them within the hour.
Then I sat at my desk and did something I had not done in years.
I went through the estate accounts myself — not the summaries my finance team prepared, but the raw transaction records going back eighteen months.
It took me forty minutes to find the first anomaly that had nothing to do with Rosa, Marisol, or Thomas.
A vendor payment.
Sixty-two thousand dollars.
Paid to a facilities maintenance company I didn't recognize.
I searched the company name.
It had been registered eight months ago.
The registered agent's address was a mail forwarding service in Nevada.
I found three more payments to the same company.
Total: two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.
I sat back.
The staff wages were six thousand dollars.
That was the thread Camila had pulled.
But underneath it, something else had been running — something that had needed the staff payments redirected precisely because the larger transfers had to stay invisible.
Keep the household accounts looking normal.
Keep me looking at the summaries.
Keep the real movement buried in line items no one would question.
Harrison had been with me for eleven years.
My phone buzzed.
Carol.
"I've looked at the note and the transfer logs," she said.
"The staff wage redirection is straightforward — that's embezzlement, easy to prove.
But I want you to pull your vendor payment records for the last two years and send those as well."
"I already found something," I said.
"A shell company.
Four payments.
Two hundred and eighteen thousand."
A pause.
"How long has Harrison managed vendor approvals?"
"Since he took the estate manager role.
Four years."
"And who had that role before him?"
"An outside firm.
I moved it in-house when Daniel suggested it would be more efficient."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"When did Daniel suggest that?"
I thought back.
"About four and a half years ago.
He'd just finished his MBA.
He said it was a good opportunity to streamline operations."
"James." Carol's voice was careful.
"I think you need to be prepared for the possibility that this started before Harrison.
That Harrison may have been brought in specifically for this purpose."
The room was very quiet.
"You're saying my son recruited him."
"I'm saying the timing is worth examining.
Send me the vendor records.
All of them.
I'm going to bring in a forensic accountant first thing tomorrow."
After I hung up, I stayed at my desk for a long time without moving.
Eleven years I had trusted Harrison.
Nineteen years I had trusted Carol.
Twenty-six years I had loved my son.
I thought about the portrait at the top of the stairs — Daniel at sixteen, standing beside me at the groundbreaking of my first major development.
He had been so proud that day.
I remembered thinking he would be someone worth watching.
My phone buzzed again.
A text from Daniel.
*Dad.
I know you're angry.
Can we talk?
Just the two of us.
Please.*
I set the phone face-down on the desk.
May you like
In the guest room down the hall, a nine-year-old girl was sleeping with her pink backpack still on her shoulders because she had not yet learned that it was safe to put it down.
I picked up the vendor files and started sending them to Carol.
