“Why—” Damon’s face had gone the color of ash.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the last time we spoke as husband and wife,” I said, and my voice did not shake, “you told me I had wasted the best years of your life waiting for my body to work.” I let that sit in the silence for a moment.
Then I reached into the folder one more time.
“And second,” I said.
“Rothwell Global Enterprises.” Across the patio, Everett Rothwell went very still.
“Over the final eighteen months of our marriage,” I said, to Damon, and to the two hundred people who had come to watch him celebrate himself, “more than four hundred and twenty thousand dollars was moved out of my grandmother’s trust, through shell companies, into accounts controlled by your brother, your mother, and this house — the one we are standing in.
This morning, my attorney filed formal criminal and civil fraud complaints.
The trust accounts are frozen by court order as of yesterday.
And forensic auditors are going through the books right now, as we stand here.” For one heartbeat, nothing.
And then the perfect wedding came apart.
Sloane rounded on Damon, her voice climbing toward a shriek about frozen accounts and what he had promised her.
Everett shoved through the guests toward his brother.
Priscilla was on her feet, saying something desperate about Oregon.
Two hundred of the most important people in Damon’s world stood on a Malibu lawn and watched his family scream at one another over stolen money.
I set the microphone down on a table.
I did not raise my voice.
I did not stay to watch.
I turned my back on the ruin they had built with their own hands, and I walked, unhurried, toward the exit and the ocean beyond it.
Chapter 16 — A Clear Golden Morning
