Chương 4
Claire turned off the monitor.
Simon remained standing. “There’s more.”
“Of course there is.”
He placed a bank notice on her desk.
The studio maintained an operating line of credit for large procurement cycles. Hotels paid in stages. Vendors did not always agree to wait. The line allowed the studio to place orders before receiving final client installments.
The notice was not a default letter. It was a request for information following an automated review triggered by unusual activity.
Claire read the figures twice.
“Who initiated these transfers?”
“That’s what I was hoping you could explain.”
Three payments had left a studio reserve account over the previous six weeks. Each had been authorized through an administrative profile formerly assigned to Adrian.
Claire looked up. “His access was revoked in January.”
“We requested revocation in January.”
“Requested?”
“The bank removed him as a signer. Apparently, his online administrative credentials remained linked to an old treasury profile.”
Mara took the notice. “Where did the money go?”
“An entity called Northline Advisory.”
Claire knew the name.
Adrian’s company, Vale Development Group, had hired Northline two years earlier to help restructure a stalled mixed-use project. Adrian had described the firm as expensive and useless, which usually meant someone there had told him no.
“How much?” Claire asked, though the number was printed in front of her.
“One hundred eighty-four thousand, total.”
The room became very quiet.
On the other side of the glass wall, someone laughed near the coffee machine, then lowered their voice when they remembered where they were.
Claire placed both palms flat on the desk. “Why didn’t we see this?”
Simon’s face tightened. “The reserve account is reviewed monthly. The transfers were coded as vendor retainers and matched to existing project numbers.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Could Adrian do that?”
“Not without access to the accounting portal.”
“He had access.”
“He shouldn’t have.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No,” Simon said. “It’s the part I’m ashamed of.”
Claire leaned back.
Simon had been the first person she hired who knew how to build systems. Before him, she paid vendors from a spreadsheet named FINAL PAYMENTS NEW and kept receipts in a ceramic bowl. He had transformed improvisation into a company. He had also trusted that a revoked signer was a revoked user.
“Did the bank recover anything?” Mara asked.
“They froze the receiving account after we called this morning. We don’t know what remains.”
“Have you notified your insurer?”
“Yes.”
“Police?”
Simon looked at Claire.
She looked away.
Mara put the notice down. “This may be unauthorized access and misappropriation. The company needs independent counsel.”
“You are my counsel,” Claire said.
“I am your divorce counsel. I can coordinate, but the studio needs someone whose representation is not complicated by the marital case.”
“Complicated how?”
“If Adrian claims the transfers were authorized during the marriage, your personal interests and the company’s interests may diverge.”
“They don’t.”
“That is what people say before receiving separate advice.”
Claire’s phone vibrated again. Adrian’s name appeared.
She turned the phone facedown.
Simon glanced at it. “Does he know we found the transfers?”
“No.”
“Then why is he calling?”
“The ceiling.”
Nobody smiled.
Mara gathered the bank notice and slid it back toward Simon. “Preserve every access log, email, approval record, and device. Do not contact Northline again until counsel is engaged.”
“I already emailed them.”
“What did you say?”
“That the transfers were unauthorized and we expected immediate return.”
“Did they answer?”
Simon pulled out his phone. “Two minutes ago.”
He read silently, and the color changed in his face.
“What?” Claire asked.
“They say the funds were applied to outstanding invoices and a retainer under an engagement letter signed by Claire.”
Claire stood so quickly her chair struck the wall.
“I never signed an engagement letter with Northline.”
Simon handed her the phone.
The attached PDF displayed her name in a digital signature block.
CLAIRE E. BELL, MANAGING MEMBER.
The signature was not a scanned imitation. It was the authentic signature generated through the studio’s document platform, with a certificate number and timestamp.
Mara came around the desk.
“Don’t forward that,” she said. “Save the original email and attachment.”
Claire stared at the date.
It had been signed at 11:42 p.m. on a Thursday in February.
That night, she had been in Mara’s conference room reviewing settlement language. She remembered because the building’s heat had failed and Mara had lent her a pair of wool socks from an emergency drawer.
Adrian had been at the house.
The house where Claire’s old laptop remained in the library desk because Adrian had insisted she remove her personal belongings gradually rather than “turn the separation into a raid.”
The old laptop had access to the studio’s document platform.
She lowered the phone.
“He used my computer.”
Mara’s expression did not change, but her voice did. “Possibly.”
“He knew the password.”
“Possibly.”
“He watched me type it for years.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“Do not build the prosecution in your head before we have the logs.”
“I’m not building anything.”
“You have already convicted him three times since that sentence began.”
Simon sat in one of the visitor chairs. “I should have forced a password reset on every device.”
“Yes,” Claire said.
The answer came too quickly.
Simon looked at her.
She pressed her lips together. “That was unfair.”
“It was also true.”
“It was my laptop. My password. My husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Mara said.
The word settled into the room.
Claire had been divorced for seventy-two hours.
The judgment had been entered on Monday afternoon. She had eaten crackers for dinner because every restaurant menu felt too celebratory or too sad. On Tuesday she signed a lease for a furnished apartment with windows facing a parking structure. On Wednesday she approved the removal schedule. On Thursday morning she had watched the chandelier descend.
May you like
Now it was Thursday afternoon, and someone had signed her name to move nearly two hundred thousand dollars out of her company.
The divorce had not ended anything. It had only changed the category of the problems.
