Chapter 13 - Say My Name —
Victor requested one final meeting before his suspension became permanent. His lawyer said he could explain the accounting in context. The audit committee agreed to hear him at the company’s downtown offices.
June arranged for me to attend the portion concerning the allegations against me. I wasn’t there to investigate him. I was there because too many decisions about my life had happened in rooms I wasn’t invited into.
Victor stood when I entered.
“Alina. You look well.”
“You look surprised.”
Victor began with systems failures. Duplicate invoices. A difficult vendor. An employee who had misunderstood clinical language.
Then he said, “Mrs. Cross’s personal distress has complicated the review.”
“Which part?” I asked.
He blinked.
“The fake email address? The copied signature? Or the money that never reached those families?”
“I understand you’re upset.”
“My feelings aren’t an accounting category.”
June put the forged authorization beside the gala contract. The same missing stroke appeared on both.
The independent auditor asked Victor about the recovery number attached to the false email account. His lawyer told him not to answer.
Victor turned toward Dorian. “You believed the records when they were useful to you.”
“Yes,” Dorian said.
The room went still.
“I believed them because accusing her privately was easier than admitting I didn’t understand my own accounts. That is my failure. It doesn’t make your documents real.”
Victor’s face hardened. “You’ll lose the financing.”
“Then I’ll lose it.”
“For this?”
“For the truth.”
The meeting ended when Victor’s lawyer asked for a break. In the hallway, Ortiz and another investigator were waiting. Warrants had been issued on the evidence gathered during the previous week. Adrian had been taken into custody that morning. Victor was next.
He looked at me as the officer explained the warrant.
“You could have walked away rich.”
I held his gaze.
“You should have let me walk away with my name.”
After they took him downstairs, Dorian reached for my hand, then stopped himself.
“What happens now?” he asked.
May you like
I looked at June’s folder.
“Now we finish the divorce.”
