Marcus called again before I had even left the neonatal unit.
I watched his name flash across the screen, then silenced the phone. Leo was sleeping beneath his blanket, his chest rising in small, steady movements. I didn't want another conversation with Marcus to follow me into that room.
But avoiding him wouldn't solve anything. He had spent years building influence inside my company, and if Claire's suspicions were correct, he had also spent months making sure I never discovered what he was doing.
I returned to the hospital room, where Claire was sitting up with a tray of food on her lap. She looked at my face and immediately understood that something had happened.
"Marcus?" she asked.
"Yes. He knows the investigation has started."
She set down her fork. "What did he say?"
"He tried to convince me that I'm letting personal issues interfere with business. Then he asked whether this was about you."
Her expression tightened. "He knows."
"Knows what?"
"That I found the payments. Maybe not exactly what I have, but enough to be worried."
I sat down. "Claire, I need you to tell me where those records are. The investigators will need them."
She considered the request for several seconds. Then she reached into the drawer beside her bed and took out a small envelope.
"I didn't bring the original files to the hospital," she said. "But I have a list of the companies, the payment dates, and the account numbers I traced."
She handed me the envelope.
Inside were several sheets of paper covered in Claire's careful handwriting. Each entry included a company name, the date of a payment, the amount, and a reference to the relevant invoice. Some amounts were modest. Others were substantial enough to attract attention even in a project of Harbor Point's size.
One company had received $780,000 for consulting services during a period when its listed office was vacant. Another had billed us repeatedly for environmental assessments that appeared to duplicate work performed by a separate engineering firm.
At the bottom of the final page, Claire had written a note beside three companies: Common registered agent. Same intermediary bank.
I looked up.
"How did you trace these?"
"Public filings, internal reports, and the documents I was authorized to access while I was still working with the project."
"Did you keep the original invoices?"
"Copies. They're not all in the same place."
I folded the papers and returned them to the envelope.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. We still don't know who ultimately received the money."
That was true. Suspicious payments weren't proof of theft. The investigators would need to establish who authorized the transactions, what services had actually been delivered, and whether the companies were connected to anyone inside the business.
I called the independent forensic accounting firm our general counsel had recommended. By the time the call ended, they had agreed to begin a preliminary review the following morning.
I also instructed the legal department to preserve every relevant record, including Marcus's communications and the original approval documents. The instructions were formal and carefully worded. I wanted no one to mistake the investigation for a personal vendetta.
The next morning, I drove to the company's headquarters for the first time since Leo's birth.
The reception area looked exactly as it had before: polished stone floors, glass meeting rooms, and a large bronze sculpture that I had once insisted was essential to the building's character. Employees moved between offices carrying laptops and coffee cups. Nobody appeared to know that the company was about to face an internal investigation.
Rebecca met me outside my office.
"Marcus has been asking for you since seven," she said.
"Has he told you why?"
"He says the board needs clarification about the Harbor Point delay."
I nodded. "Please arrange a meeting with the general counsel and the forensic team. Marcus can attend once we've agreed on the scope."
Rebecca hesitated.
"He's not going to like that."
"He doesn't have to."
I entered my office and found a stack of documents on the desk. At the top was the Harbor Point executive summary, the same report I had reviewed before the hospital called.
I opened it and began checking the vendor payments against Claire's list.
Within twenty minutes, I found the first discrepancy.
The approval signatures belonged to different department heads, but the supporting documentation had been uploaded through the same administrative account. The timestamps also showed that several invoices had been approved within minutes of one another, despite supposedly requiring separate reviews.
It was the sort of detail I might once have dismissed as administrative convenience.
Now I made a note of every instance.
At ten, the forensic team arrived. Their lead investigator, a woman named Natalie Price, introduced herself and explained that her team would conduct an independent examination of the financial records, vendor relationships, payment authorizations, and internal communications relevant to Harbor Point.
"We'll need unrestricted access to the records within the agreed scope," she said. "And we'll need the company to avoid altering any potentially relevant material."
"You'll have it."
She glanced at the folder on my desk.
"Is this the information that triggered the review?"
I slid Claire's notes across the table.
"These are preliminary findings from someone who identified inconsistencies before the divorce."
Natalie read through the pages without comment. When she reached the final note about the shared banking intermediary, she looked up.
"That gives us a useful starting point."
I told her that the person who had initially presented the divorce documents was Marcus Reed, our chief operating adviser, and that evidence suggested his account had intercepted communications from my former wife.
Natalie's expression remained neutral.
"That's relevant to the communications investigation," she said. "We'll document it separately so the financial review remains independent."
I appreciated her caution. I didn't want the investigators to reach a conclusion simply because I was angry or because Claire had been hurt.
By noon, the team had requested several years of payment records, vendor onboarding documents, and the correspondence surrounding the most unusual transactions.
Marcus arrived twenty minutes later.
He walked into the conference room wearing a dark suit and the expression of a man who expected to be welcomed. When he saw Natalie and the other investigators, his smile faded.
"What's all this?"
I gestured toward an empty chair.
"An independent financial review."
"I gathered that. Why wasn't I informed?"
"You're being informed now."
He looked at the documents on the table, then at Natalie.
"Who authorized this?"
"I did," I replied.
His jaw tightened.
"Julian, we should discuss this privately."
"No. The review needs to be transparent."
For a moment, he seemed ready to argue. Then he pulled out the chair and sat down.
Natalie explained the process, the document-preservation requirements, and the investigators' intention to interview employees involved in the relevant approvals.
Marcus listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he leaned forward.
"Before this gets out of hand, I want to make something clear. Harbor Point is a complicated project. There are legitimate reasons for overlapping consulting agreements and accelerated payments. If we're going to examine every invoice as if it were suspicious, we'll waste months."
"We're not examining every invoice as if it were suspicious," Natalie said evenly. "We're tracing specific transactions that have been identified for review."
Marcus turned toward me.
"Who identified them?"
I held his gaze.
"Claire."
The silence was immediate.
Marcus leaned back slowly. His face remained composed, but the muscles around his eyes tightened.
"Claire was never responsible for the full financial structure of Harbor Point."
"She had access to the records," I said. "And she found inconsistencies."
"She also had a personal grievance against the company."
I felt anger rise, but I kept my voice level.
"Her personal life isn't the subject of this review."
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then he stood.
"You're making a serious mistake."
"That's possible," I replied. "But the investigators will determine whether the payments were legitimate."
Marcus gathered his folder and left without another word.
Natalie watched the door close.
"Has he always reacted that way to scrutiny?"
I thought about the question.
"Not when he was the one asking the questions."
That afternoon, I returned to the hospital. Claire was asleep when I arrived, so I sat beside her bed and reviewed the investigators' initial requests. For the first time in years, I had allowed someone else to manage a major business problem without insisting that every decision pass through me.
It felt uncomfortable.
It also felt necessary.
When Claire woke, she found me reading the same page for the third time.
"Any progress?"
"The investigators have started. Marcus isn't happy."
She gave a tired smile.
"That doesn't surprise me."
I told her about the meeting and his attempt to discredit her findings. She listened, then asked whether I had mentioned the false attorney email.
"Yes. Natalie is documenting it separately."
Claire nodded.
"Good. I don't want the financial evidence dismissed as a marital argument."
"Neither do I."
She looked toward the window.
"Julian, there's something else I haven't told you."
I put the papers down.
"What is it?"
"Before I left, I found a document showing that one of those consulting companies had been paid through an account connected to a property Marcus owned."
I stared at her.
"You're sure?"
"I traced the registered address and found a holding company. It wasn't in his name directly, but the corporate filings showed a connection."
"Why didn't you include it in your notes?"
"Because I couldn't verify the final ownership. I didn't want to accuse him without proof."
I sat very still.
The possibility that Marcus had personally benefited from the payments changed the investigation's significance. If the connection held, this was no longer merely a question of poor accounting or questionable vendors.
It could be fraud.
And Marcus had just spent the morning warning me against looking too closely.
That evening, Natalie called with an update. Her team had identified a series of payments that matched Claire's preliminary list. They were still examining the underlying contracts, but several vendor records contained inconsistent ownership information.
Then she mentioned something that made my stomach tighten.
One of the companies had received its first payment three days after Claire requested an internal review.
The timing was too precise to ignore.
I thanked Natalie and ended the call.
For months, I had believed that my marriage had collapsed because Claire had changed her mind and I had been too proud to accept it.
Now I was beginning to see another possibility: someone had deliberately isolated us because our continued trust in each other might have exposed a scheme worth millions.
And if Marcus had been willing to fabricate a divorce, intercept calls, and manipulate our personal lives, I had no reason to assume he would stop at financial deception.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The Man Who Had Managed My Life for Eleven Years Finally Made a Move I Couldn’t Ignore
A Phone Call That Shattered a Billion-Dollar Deal and Exposed a Past I Thought Was Settled
Part 5 of 12
