Chapter 9 - The Money Dad Lost
Dad did not deny it.
"What money?" I asked.
He sat across from me in the Hartwell apartment overlooking the river.
"Thirty million."
I stared.
"You invested directly in Adrian?"
"Not exactly."
"Dad."
"A Hartwell fund invested in a logistics note two years ago. I approved it because you were married to him."
"You said you never gave him money."
"I said I never handed him money. That distinction sounds worse now than it did then."
I stood.
"So both men in my life were making financial decisions around my marriage without telling me."
Dad flinched.
Good.
He needed to.
"I was trying to protect you."
"Adrian says he was building our future. You say you were protecting me. Everybody has a noble word for taking away my choices."
Silence.
Dad nodded.
"You're right."
I hated that his agreement made me cry.
He did not defend himself.
He did not tell me how dangerous Adrian had looked in his background investigation.
He simply said:
"I'm sorry."
Claire later explained the missing money.
Vale Meridian had borrowed through a private note backed partly by Hartwell capital.
Adrian diverted some of the proceeds through shell vendors.
Vanessa's companies received eleven million.
Other companies received nineteen.
Those companies traced to Adrian's chief operating officer, Marcus Dane.
Marcus had worked with Adrian since college.
He had also signed the apartment transfer carrying my forged signature.
Police obtained warrants.
Marcus disappeared.
His office was empty.
His company phone sat in a desk drawer.
But his personal laptop remained connected to cloud backup.
Inside was a folder named AV EXIT.
The plan was not only to divorce me.
It was to remove Adrian from Vale Meridian after the asset sale.
Marcus and Vanessa intended to take the profitable distribution subsidiary and leave Adrian controlling a hollow parent company loaded with debt.
I stared at Claire.
"Vanessa was betraying him too?"
"She appears to have been."
For the first time, I almost felt sorry for Adrian.
Then I remembered the marble floor.
Sympathy passed.
A spreadsheet inside the folder listed expected payouts.
Marcus: $18 million.
Vanessa: $24 million.
Adrian: zero.
Me: settlement capped at $3 million.
At the bottom was a note:
IF A.H. RESISTS, USE INCIDENT RECORD.
Claire frowned.
"What incident record?"
Then the file opened.
It contained photographs of me crying after previous arguments with Adrian.
Audio clips.
Texts taken out of context.
May you like
And one video filmed secretly in our bedroom.
They had been building a story about me for months.
