Dad nodded.
"You will."
I turned toward Rebecca.
"How much do we have?"
Her answer came immediately.
"Enough."
Three months earlier, I had noticed the first discrepancy.
Mercer Freight Solutions was the subsidiary Ethan managed.
It handled several regional logistics contracts.
The business was profitable.
But one quarterly report showed unusually high consulting expenses.
I asked Ethan.
He said the division had hired outside analysts.
I asked for the contracts.
He told me finance had them.
Finance told me Ethan's office had them.
That was enough to make the old part of my brain wake up.
Before marrying Ethan, I specialized in forensic accounting.
I followed money professionally.
I knew that fraud rarely announced itself.
It appeared as patterns.
Rounded invoices.
Repeated vendors.
Unusual timing.
Addresses that didn't match.
Payments approved just beneath review thresholds.
So I started looking.
Quietly.
The first suspicious company was Cole Strategic Consulting.
Vanessa's surname.
I searched the corporate filing.
Registered agent.
Vanessa Cole.
Business address.
A virtual office.
No meaningful operating history.
Yet Mercer Freight Solutions had paid it hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Then I found another vendor.
Northstar Procurement.
Different company.
Same mailing address.
Then another.
VC Logistics Advisory.
Different company.
Same bank routing pattern.
I didn't confront Ethan.
I copied everything.
I sent encrypted files to Rebecca.
She brought in outside forensic specialists.
The investigation grew.
By the time I entered the hospital, we had identified more than two million dollars in questionable transfers.
But there was a problem.
We didn't yet know whether Ethan had personally authorized all of them.
Now we did.
Rebecca opened her tablet.
"Your father authorized us to accelerate the internal investigation this morning."
"Because of the divorce?"
"Because Ethan tried to freeze your household account yesterday."
I stared at her.
"He what?"
Dad's jaw tightened.
"He instructed treasury to suspend transfers from an account he apparently believed was jointly controlled."
"While I was in surgery?"
"Approximately two hours after you entered surgery."
I felt cold.
"Why?"
Rebecca looked at me carefully.
"We think he intended to create financial pressure before serving the papers."
I looked at my sleeping sons.
"He knew I might die."
Dad's face hardened.
"Don't."
