Chapter 13 - The Pages They Missed
The shredding truck never made it through the gate.
Officers stopped it while investigators secured the office under the authority they had obtained.
The driver handed over his work order.
He had no idea what he had been sent to destroy.
That was how much of it worked.
One person carried a box.
Another entered a number.
Another signed without reading.
By the end, nobody had to feel responsible for the whole thing.
Mara took me home to my father’s house.
I wanted to stay awake until Ortiz called.
My body disagreed.
I fell asleep on the couch wearing borrowed sweatpants and woke to sunlight across my face.
For one terrible second, I thought I was late making Grant’s breakfast.
Then I remembered.
The relief hurt.
My father stood in the doorway holding toast.
“You slept six hours.”
“Did anyone call?”
“Yes.”
He set the plate down.
“They found records.
A lot of them.”
I cried into the toast.
That afternoon, the foundation board announced Grant’s removal as chairman.
Vivian resigned for what her statement called health reasons.
The press called it a stunning collapse.
It didn’t feel stunning from inside.
It felt like cleaning a house after a flood.
Everything had to be touched.
Everything smelled wrong.
Mara arranged an independent accountant to review my records.
The two-point-four million had passed through the account bearing my name.
Most of it had moved out within hours.
The access history and bank correspondence raised questions about who controlled the transactions.
Questions were better than assumptions.
They weren’t freedom yet.
“I should’ve checked,” I told Mara.
“Yes,” she said.
She never gave me the comfort of a lie.
Then she added, “Failing to check is different from knowingly stealing.
We’re going to establish what you did and what you knew.”
Later, my father came home from meeting investigators.
He had brought every company record they requested.
“They’re reviewing the old audit,” he said.
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
It was the first time I had heard him say that without making it smaller.
That night, a courier delivered an envelope to Mara’s office.
Inside was a photograph from my wedding.
Grant kissing my forehead.
Vivian smiling behind us.
On the back, someone had written:
ASK YOUR FATHER WHAT HE PAID TO KEEP YOU MARRIED.
Attached was a copy of a transfer.
Five hundred thousand dollars.
From my father.
May you like
To Grant.
Dated three weeks after I married him.
