Chapter 9: What the Accounts Revealed
St.
Anselm's at five in the morning was quiet in the way hospitals are quiet — not peaceful, just paused.
Clara walked through the main entrance with Lily on her hip and Reyes one step behind, and a nurse at the desk looked up and said Mr.
Vance was in the trauma unit and a doctor would be out shortly.
She sat in a row of plastic chairs and held Lily and did not think about anything except the sound of Holt saying he was conscious.
The doctor came out after twenty minutes.
His name was Okafor and he had the careful manner of someone who had delivered news in both directions many times.
"Your husband has a serious head injury and two broken ribs," he said.
"He was exposed to cold for an extended period.
He's stable.
He's going to need time, but he is stable."
"Can I see him?"
"In a little while.
We're getting him settled."
Lily looked at the doctor.
"Is my daddy going to be okay?"
Dr.
Okafor looked at her with complete seriousness.
"Your daddy is very strong," he said.
"He's going to need to rest for a while.
But yes.
He's going to be okay."
Lily nodded as though this confirmed something she had already decided.
Clara pressed her face into her daughter's hair and breathed.
Two hours later, she was sitting beside Ethan's bed.
He was pale and bandaged and attached to monitors, but his eyes were open and they found her face immediately when she came through the door.
"Hey," he said.
His voice was rough.
"Hey," she said.
She sat down.
She took his hand — the one without the IV line.
She held it with both of hers.
"Lily?" he said.
"Asleep in the waiting room.
Mr.
Miller is with her."
He closed his eyes briefly.
"Miller came?"
"Miller's been there all night." She paused.
"Ethan.
I found the letter."
His hand tightened around hers.
"I found Farro," she said.
"The police found you.
Beatrice is cooperating.
Scott isn't talking but it doesn't seem to matter anymore."
He was quiet for a moment.
"How much do you know?"
"Not everything.
Tell me."
He looked at the ceiling.
Then he told her.
The fraud had started four years ago — before Lily was born, before the luxury senior living project, before any of the excuses and late nights and flimsy explanations.
Scott had been skimming from the company accounts in small amounts at first, then larger ones, routing money through a shell entity that Phillip Greaves had helped him establish.
Beatrice had known for at least two years.
She had not stopped it.
She had helped conceal it.
When Ethan found the discrepancy — a misaligned figure in a quarterly report that Carol Greaves had quietly flagged — he had started pulling threads.
The more he pulled, the larger it became.
Millions of dollars.
Investor funds.
Elderly clients who had put their retirement savings into the senior living project, believing it was sound.
"They were going to let it collapse," Ethan said.
"The project.
Take the insurance payout, blame the market, walk away.
The investors would lose everything."
"And you."
He looked at her.
"They needed you gone," she said.
"Before you could report it."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
"Scott arranged it," she said.
"The bag in the apartment — they were going to use it to make me look like a suspect.
Keep the police focused on me while they moved money and covered tracks."
"Beatrice brought the plant," Ethan said quietly.
"I didn't know that part."
"Lily saw her."
His jaw tightened.
He looked away.
When he looked back, his eyes were wet.
"I should have told you everything," he said.
"I thought if I kept you out of it, you'd be safer.
I thought—"
"You thought you could handle it alone," Clara said.
Not an accusation.
A fact.
"Yes."
"You almost did." She squeezed his hand.
"Farro had a deadline.
Seventy-two hours.
You cut it very close."
A sound came out of him that was almost a laugh.
"I know."
She looked at him — the bandage, the monitors, the pallor — and felt something that was not quite anger and not quite relief but lived somewhere between them, in the complicated territory of loving someone who had tried to protect you in exactly the wrong way.
"Don't do that again," she said.
"No," he said.
May you like
"I won't."
She believed him.
