Chapter 9 - THE THREE COMPANIES
Three companies.
Three properties.
Three sets of lies.
Lauren sent everything.
The first deal had been completed eighteen months earlier.
A warehouse.
Bought for $210,000.
Sold seven months later for $315,000.
Profit disappeared into a private investment account.
The second was a small apartment building.
The third was the shopping strip.
My identity appeared in all three.
My credit.
My income.
My electronic signature.
But I had never received a dollar.
Rachel brought in a forensic accountant named Marcus Hale.
He was the kind of man who spoke quietly and made bad people nervous.
After two days, he called me.
“Your husband was running money through multiple entities.”
“How much?”
“Do you want the conservative number?”
“No.”
“Approximately $480,000 moved through accounts connected to your identity.”
I nearly dropped the phone.
“What?”
“That doesn’t mean all of it was stolen from you. Some were business proceeds. But your identity was used repeatedly.”
“Where did the money go?”
“Some to Teresa. Some to Diego. Some withdrawn.”
“And the rest?”
He paused.
“There’s an account we can’t fully trace yet.”
“How much?”
“About $130,000.”
I sat down.
“Offshore?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
“That’s what’s strange.”
“What?”
“The account belongs to a trust.”
“Whose trust?”
“A minor child.”
Every hair on my arms lifted.
“What child?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Mateo Alvarez.”
My nephew.
Teresa’s grandson.
Not Sofía.
Mateo.
I called my sister-in-law, Elena.
Mateo’s mother.
She answered cautiously.
“We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Teresa.”
Silence.
Then: “What did she do?”
I explained the trust.
Elena went quiet.
Too quiet.
“You knew.”
“I knew about a trust. I didn’t know where the money came from.”
“Why does Mateo have one?”
“My husband died. Teresa said she wanted to secure his future.”
“Elena, there is more than a hundred thousand dollars in it.”
“What?”
Her voice cracked.
Then I heard something else.
Fear.
“Elena, what aren’t you telling me?”
She whispered, “Teresa controls that trust.”
My stomach turned.
“Why?”
“She pressured me into signing papers after Gabriel died.”
“How pressured?”
“She said if I didn’t, she’d prove I was unfit.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was again.
Same strategy.
Same threat.
Same woman.
“How long has she been doing this?”
Elena began to cry.
“Years.”
She told me everything.
Teresa had controlled Gabriel’s life too.
His money.
His marriage.
After he died in a car accident, Teresa moved in on Elena financially.
She convinced her to sign documents she barely understood.
She took control of insurance money “for Mateo.”
Then she began criticizing Elena’s parenting.
Documenting mistakes.
Threatening custody.
Exactly what she was doing to me.
“Elena, why didn’t you tell Diego?”
“I did.”
My heart stopped.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me his mother was just trying to protect Mateo.”
Of course.
Then Elena said something quieter.
“There’s something about Gabriel’s accident.”
“What?”
“I never believed it was an accident.”
I froze.
“Why?”
“Because the night before he died, Gabriel told me he had discovered what Teresa was doing with his money.”
My mouth went dry.
May you like
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said, ‘If anything happens to me, don’t trust my mother.’”
