Chapter 7: The Account That Changed Everything
The name was not Renata's.
I had braced for it to be.
Walking out of the café, phone pressed to my ear, I had constructed a version of events where Renata Voss was the center of everything — the debt, the transfers, the hidden company, all of it orbiting around her.
But the name Darcy gave me belonged to someone else entirely.
"Victor Marsh," she said.
"Do you know that name?"
I stopped walking.
A man behind me stepped around me without looking up.
"Julian's college roommate," I said.
"They lost touch years ago.
Julian mentioned him once or twice.
Said he'd moved abroad."
"He didn't move abroad.
He's been in the city for the past three years.
And he and Julian have been in regular contact for at least eighteen months based on the account activity." Darcy's voice was measured, precise.
"Victor Marsh is the registered owner of the account that received the eleven thousand.
He's also listed as a silent partner in the dormant company — not in the public filings, but in a private shareholders' agreement we found attached to the original registration documents."
"Julian told me that company had one owner.
Him."
"The private agreement says otherwise.
Marsh holds a thirty percent stake."
I started walking again, not toward anywhere specific, just moving.
The cold helped me think.
"So Julian has a business partner he never told me about," I said.
"Who is also connected to the money he's been moving."
"Yes.
And Marsh has a history." Darcy paused.
"Two civil judgments in the last five years.
Both financial disputes.
One settled, one still outstanding.
He's been named in a fraud investigation in another state — no charges filed, but he was a person of interest."
"And Julian has been in business with him."
"For at least three years."
I thought about the evening Julian had come home looking lighter than usual — relieved, almost — and told me he'd found an investor for a new project.
He hadn't named the investor.
I hadn't pushed.
I had been so relieved that he seemed like himself again that I'd made dinner and asked no questions.
That was three years ago.
"Darcy," I said.
"Is Julian the one who ran up the debt?
Or was it Marsh?"
A pause.
"That's the right question.
And I don't have a clean answer yet.
What I can tell you is that the debt Julian is carrying — the two hundred thousand Eleanor mentioned — the creditor is connected to Marsh.
It's possible Julian borrowed from someone in Marsh's network."
"Which would mean Julian doesn't just owe money.
He owes money to people connected to his own business partner."
"Yes."
"Which would make it very difficult to walk away from."
"Very."
I stopped at a corner and waited for the light.
Across the street, a woman was pushing a stroller, talking on her phone, completely ordinary.
The world continuing as though nothing had shifted.
"He's trapped," I said.
"He put himself there.
But yes."
"And he thought the solution was to keep taking money from me."
"Without telling you why.
Yes."
The light changed.
I crossed.
"I need to know one more thing," I said.
"Renata Voss.
Is she connected to Marsh?"
"I've been looking at that since this morning." Darcy's voice was careful.
"They have a mutual professional connection — a financial services firm they both worked with four years ago.
Whether that connection is still active, I don't know yet.
But it's not nothing."
"So Renata might not be a romantic involvement."
"She might not be primarily that, no.
She might be someone Marsh placed close to Julian.
To monitor him.
To manage him."
I stood on the pavement and let that settle.
Julian, who had always believed he was the smartest person in any room.
Julian, who had signed paperwork he never read.
Julian, who had told me to get out of a house he didn't own.
Julian, who might have been managed by the people he owed money to, for years, without fully understanding it.
"He's going to call me again," I said.
"He already has.
Four times in the last hour."
"When he does," I said, "I'm going to answer."
Darcy was quiet for a moment.
"What are you going to say?"
"I'm going to tell him I want to meet.
Just the two of us." I turned back toward her office.
"And I'm going to let him think he still has a chance to talk his way out of this."
"And then?"
"And then I'm going to find out how much he actually knows about what Marsh has done.
Because if Julian is a victim of this as much as I am—" I paused.
"That changes what comes next."
"It changes it," Darcy said.
"But it doesn't erase it."
"No," I said.
"It doesn't."
I was halfway back to her office when my phone buzzed.
Not Julian.
Not Eleanor.
A number I didn't recognize.
May you like
A text message, four words.
*We should talk, Sloan.*
