Chapter 13 - A WOMAN WHO LOST EVERYTHING
Sabrina returned with her former husband's permission to share a folder from their failed business. Daniel expected bank statements. Instead he found birthday cards, school tuition bills, and a photograph of a family smiling in front of a hardware store that no longer existed.
“I kept these because numbers make it sound like nobody got hurt,” Sabrina said. “My daughter quit college. My husband stopped trusting anyone. For a while, we stopped trusting each other.”
She looked at Daniel. “Please don't make your children spend the rest of their lives proving they were worth protecting.”
He shook his head. “I won't.”
Chen's investigators compared Sabrina's documents with the Blake files. Both involved Voss's forged forms, deposits broken into odd amounts, and Cody's Northstar accounts. The pattern was stronger than one household's word against another.
Amanda's attorney offered a different story. He filed a motion alleging that Daniel and Emma had manipulated the video, and he implied Sabrina was seeking money.
Emma saw a headline about “conflicting family claims” on her phone and threw it onto the bed.
“Why do they get to call us liars?”
Daniel wanted to promise everyone would believe her. Instead he said, “Because lawyers can make claims. Evidence decides what holds up.”
He sat with her until the anger eased. Then Chen called with news of the independent video examination. The original cloud logs and synchronized copies supported the recording's continuity; no material edit had been found in the preserved file.
“There will still be legal arguments,” Chen cautioned. “But this is important.”
Daniel hung up and heard a noise from the hotel hallway. A folded envelope lay outside their door, though nobody had knocked.
Inside was a photograph of Lily sleeping in the hospital.
On the back someone had written:
May you like
WE CAN STILL FINISH THIS QUIETLY.
