Chapter 2 - The Company Built With My Money
I left the hospital two days later with Evelyn strapped into a car seat that seemed absurdly large around her tiny body.
Rebecca was waiting at my apartment.
She had groceries in one bag and three banker’s boxes in another.
“You understand normal people bring casseroles to new mothers?”
She set the boxes on my dining table.
“I brought fraud.”
I almost laughed.
It hurt, so I stopped.
My mother had died when I was twenty-three, and my father lived in Arizona with his second wife. Rebecca had become something between attorney and older sister during the divorce.
She was also the reason I knew the difference between being angry and being prepared.
Anger wanted me to walk into Adrian’s wedding holding a baby and watch his face collapse.
Preparation wanted bank records, subpoenas, certified documents and witnesses.
Preparation usually won.
Rebecca opened the first box.
“Brooks-Hartwell Development Group was incorporated nineteen months ago.”
“Before Adrian filed for divorce.”
“Five months before.”
She handed me a timeline.
The first transfer from my trust occurred twelve days after the corporation was formed.
$75,000.
Then $110,000.
Then $240,000.
By the time Adrian asked me for a divorce, more than $900,000 had already left accounts linked to my grandmother’s trust.
“What did he tell me about these transfers?”
“You never saw them.”
“How?”
“The statements delivered to your home were modified.”
I stared at her.
“Modified?”
“Someone generated replacement statements.”
Adrian handled the mail during the final year of our marriage.
I had been dealing with my second miscarriage, surgeries and depression.
He told me finances were one less thing I needed to worry about.
I had thanked him.
That memory tasted poisonous now.
“Celeste?”
“Most likely.”
Rebecca showed me metadata from PDF statements found on an old shared laptop.
The author field contained CMonroe.
“Wow.”
“Subtle people rarely steal this much money.”
I turned the page.
Another name appeared repeatedly.
Grant Hartwell.
“What exactly did Grant do for Grandma?”
“Financial planning. Trust administration consulting. Tax coordination.”
“He knew everything.”
“He knew enough.”
Rebecca explained that my grandmother’s real estate portfolio had been valued at roughly $9 million when she died.
It had grown.
Today, the assets were worth closer to $14 million.
The stolen $1.8 million might not have been the main objective.
It could have been seed capital.
Seed capital for Brooks-Hartwell.
“They used my money to build the company that is paying for Adrian’s wedding.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
I stared at a photograph from the BHDG website.
Adrian standing beside Grant at a ribbon cutting.
Both smiling.
Celeste slightly behind them.
The caption called them “visionary leaders transforming Chicago’s urban future.”
I nearly admired the audacity.
“Can we freeze the company?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“We need stronger evidence connecting the diverted assets directly to current company holdings.”
“What about Grandma’s forged amendment?”
“Forensic analysis is strong, but the other side will argue digital compression, scanning artifacts, clerical handling.”
“So we need the original.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“According to the trust archive, Grant retained the wet-ink original.”
I laughed once.
“Convenient.”
“Very.”
Evelyn began crying from the bassinet.
Everything stopped.
Fraud.
Divorce.
Wedding.
All of it.
I lifted her.
Rebecca watched me settle into the chair.
“You’re still planning to attend, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“With the baby?”
“Yes.”
“That could become emotionally ugly.”
“It became ugly before she was born.”
“What do you want from Adrian?”
That question surprised me.
Not legally.
Personally.
I looked at Evelyn.
“Nothing.”
Rebecca studied me.
“That’s probably the safest answer.”
I meant it.
I did not want Adrian back.
I did not want him begging.
I did not want Celeste humiliated because she had “won” him.
I wanted accountability.
There was a difference.
My phone buzzed.
Lorraine Brooks.
Adrian’s mother.
I almost declined.
Rebecca raised an eyebrow.
“Answer it.”
I put the phone on speaker.
“Mia.”
Lorraine’s voice was as cold as I remembered.
“Hello, Lorraine.”
“Adrian tells me you accepted the wedding invitation.”
“I did.”
“I think that’s inappropriate.”
I almost smiled.
“He invited me.”
“My son is compassionate to a fault.”
Rebecca silently mouthed, Unbelievable.
Lorraine continued.
“Celeste doesn’t need your bitterness around her while she’s carrying Adrian’s child.”
Evelyn shifted against me.
I looked down at her.
“Don’t worry. I have no intention of upsetting the baby.”
“I’m glad we understand each other.”
“We don’t.”
Lorraine’s voice sharpened.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing yet.”
I ended the call.
Rebecca stared at me.
“You enjoy doing that now.”
“A little.”
She turned back to the documents.
“We found something about Lorraine too.”
My smile disappeared.
“What?”
“She invested in Brooks-Hartwell.”
“With her own money?”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“Her initial capital contribution was $500,000.”
Lorraine had spent years telling me she and her late husband had been financially comfortable but not wealthy.
“Where did she get half a million dollars?”
“That’s the question.”
Rebecca slid another document toward me.
A transfer into Lorraine’s investment account had originated from Carter Legacy Services.
My grandmother’s trust.
I stared.
“No.”
“Three days later, Lorraine wired almost the exact amount into BHDG.”
“Adrian gave his mother my money?”
“Or Grant did.”
I remembered Lorraine’s behavior during the divorce.
Her insistence that I sign quickly.
Her repeated warnings that fighting over marital assets would “make everyone look ugly.”
Her attorney had even recommended a settlement agreement separating Adrian from any future trust claims.
At the time, I thought she wanted to protect her son.
Now I wondered whether she wanted to prevent discovery.
“How many people knew?”
Rebecca’s expression was grim.
“We don’t know.”
That became the central question.
The affair involved Adrian and Celeste.
The fraud involved at least Adrian, Celeste, Grant and possibly Lorraine.
Then Rebecca opened the third box.
“This arrived this morning.”
Inside was an affidavit from a former Brooks-Hartwell bookkeeper named Nadia Fields.
Nadia claimed she had been terminated after questioning transfers labeled EC RESERVE.
EC.
Evelyn Carter.
My grandmother.
The reserve accounts contained more than $4 million.
Not $1.8 million.
Four.
“Rebecca.”
“I know.”
“You said they stole one-point-eight.”
“That’s what we could prove from accounts in your name.”
“What’s the rest?”
“We think there are additional trust assets you were never told existed.”
My grandmother had been secretive about money.
She believed people behaved differently once they knew what they might inherit.
Apparently she had been right.
Nadia’s affidavit included a sentence highlighted in yellow.
Grant Hartwell instructed me that EC Reserve assets were “unclaimed family holdings that would become company property after succession resolution.”
“Succession resolution?” I asked.
Rebecca nodded.
“That’s what worries me.”
“What does it mean?”
“We don’t know.”
I felt Evelyn’s tiny heartbeat against my chest.
“Could it involve me?”
“Yes.”
“Could it involve my divorce?”
“Absolutely.”
Then Rebecca told me something she had uncovered in Grant’s old correspondence.
My grandmother’s trust contained a dormant clause.
If I died without a surviving child, a substantial portion of certain assets passed into a charitable foundation administered by Grant Hartwell.
But if I had a biological child, everything passed through my line.
I looked down at Evelyn.
“When did Grant last access the trust documents?”
“Seven months ago.”
During my pregnancy.
“Did anyone know I was pregnant?”
“I didn’t.”
“Only my doctor and my friend Natalie.”
Rebecca went quiet.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No. What?”
“Your former fertility clinic.”
My stomach tightened.
“What about it?”
“Grant’s wife sits on the board.”
For several seconds, I heard nothing but Evelyn breathing.
Then a memory surfaced.
Two weeks after learning I was pregnant, I received a strange phone call from the fertility clinic.
A woman asked whether my pregnancy had occurred naturally.
I refused to answer.
The caller claimed it was for “outcome tracking.”
“What if Grant knew?”
Rebecca’s face hardened.
“Then your pregnancy wasn’t just a personal complication.”
“It threatened the asset transfer.”
“Yes.”
My phone buzzed again.
This time the number was unknown.
I opened the message.
A photograph appeared.
Me.
Leaving the hospital.
Evelyn’s car seat visible in my hand.
Beneath it were six words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED CHILDLESS.
Rebecca grabbed the phone.
Every instinct in me changed.
The wedding was no longer simply an opportunity.
May you like
Someone already knew about Evelyn.
And whoever it was had been watching us.
