My attorney, Daniel, sent me the documents that afternoon.
I opened them one by one.
At first, everything looked familiar.
Invoices.
Transfers.
Corporate accounts.
Then I noticed something strange.
The fraudulent payments had started almost eight years earlier.
Wendy had only been moving money for the last three years.
I stared at the screen.
“That’s impossible.”
Daniel’s voice came through the phone.
“Keep reading.”
I opened the oldest transaction.
The original transfers had been authorized by someone else.
My husband’s father.
Richard Sterling.
I leaned back in my chair.
“Why would he blame Wendy?”
“That’s the question.”
I kept scrolling.
Then I found an internal email dated seven years earlier.
Richard had written:
If anyone asks about the missing funds, Wendy will take responsibility. She already knows enough to protect the company.
My hands became cold.
Wendy hadn’t created the entire scheme.
She had inherited it.
And someone had spent years making sure she would be the person everyone blamed.
Then I saw another name.
Luca Sterling.
The date beside it was only six months after our wedding.
He had known.
Maybe even longer than I thought.
I called Daniel.
“Can you trace every account connected to Luca?”
“I already did.”
“And?”
He was silent.
Then he said:
“Your husband has another account.”
“How much?”
“Enough to make the company collapse if the regulators discover it.”
My stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“Approximately eleven million dollars.”
I closed my eyes.
Eleven million.
Suddenly his mother’s obsession with the company made sense.
The constant arguments.
The password changes.
The accusations.
They weren’t protecting family money.
They were protecting evidence.
PART 4 — LUCA COMES LOOKING FOR ME
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