Chapter 3 - What He Believed —
I read the email twice. “Signs what?”
“I don’t know,” Mara said. “He sent it to my old clinic address. It forwarded to my personal account. He still uses an old contact group when he’s drinking.”
“Why were you outside my apartment?”
“I tried to find you last night. Nobody answered. This morning I saw Adrian’s driver watching your building. I followed him here, then sent the warning.”
She laid down another page: the termination notice that had ended her nursing job. Unauthorized access. Theft of confidential material. Threats against a physician.
“I reported billing for visits that never happened. They called me a thief.”
Dorian reached for the page. Mara pulled it back.
“You had your chance to read it.”
I turned to him. “What else did Victor handle for you?”
“Company accounts. Family medical expenses. Foundation payments.”
“And our divorce?”
He hesitated. That was enough.
I called my lawyer, June Park, who was still at the law office waiting to learn whether I’d survived whatever had interrupted my divorce. I told her everything. She asked for copies and told me not to sign anything.
When I hung up, Dorian was staring at the floor.
“There’s something you need to know.”
“Apparently there’s a list.”
He took a breath. “Six months ago, Victor showed me payments from the foundation to a vendor called Northstar Patient Services. You were listed as the person who approved them.”
Before our marriage fell apart, I had organized the foundation’s patient grants. I knew the name of every family we helped. I had never heard of Northstar.
“How much?”
“Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
I waited for the rest. It came slowly.
“Adrian said he believed you were under pressure. That there were private medical expenses you didn’t want me to see.”
“So you thought I stole money.”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“You stopped eating dinner with me. You stopped touching me. You let me beg you to tell me what I’d done.”
“I asked about the foundation.”
“You asked if there was anything I wanted to confess. That isn’t a question, Dorian. That’s a verdict.”
He said my name. I stood up.
June called before I reached the door.
“Alina, there’s a problem with the settlement.”
May you like
“What problem?”
“The version his office sent this morning includes a financial release that wasn’t in the version we negotiated.”
