Chapter 10 - What Julian Hid
"Why?" I asked.
We were back in Naomi's office.
Julian sat across from me.
"At first, I thought marrying you could solve the company problem."
The sentence hurt because it was clean.
Then he continued.
"And then I actually fell in love with you."
Sienna laughed bitterly.
"Convenient."
Julian ignored her.
"I delayed the wedding twice."
"You blamed vendors."
"I was trying to decide what to do."
"You could have told me."
"I know."
"You didn't."
"I know."
Naomi asked, "When did you decide to forge the consent?"
He looked down.
"The night before the wedding."
I felt something inside me finally detach.
Not explode.
Detach.
Evelyn Hartwell gave us the original ledger.
It proved Charles moved twenty-three million dollars through fake vendors.
It proved Alan Mercer questioned the payments.
It showed my father confronted Charles.
It also showed something worse.
After Alan was fired, Thomas Bennett received a payment of three million dollars from a Hartwell affiliate.
I stared at my father's initials.
TB.
Sienna saw them too.
"No."
Naomi said quietly, "We need to trace it."
For years, I had assumed my father eventually discovered the truth and tried to fix it.
What if he had been paid to stay silent?
Sienna stood so fast her chair scraped.
"Your father took money after mine was destroyed."
"I don't know that."
"It's right there."
"I said I don't know."
She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
"That's what everyone says when the truth belongs to someone they love."
Then she walked out.
Julian started to speak.
I stopped him.
"Not one word."
Naomi began tracing the three-million-dollar payment.
At 8:40 that evening, she called me.
"Clara, the money didn't go to your father."
"Whose account?"
She hesitated.
"Yours."
May you like
I felt cold.
The account had been opened when I was seventeen.
