Rothwell Global Enterprises was not a vendor.
It was not a caterer or a venue or a florist that happened to share a name with my problem.
It had received, over the final eighteen months of my marriage, more than four hundred and twenty thousand dollars — money that had originated inside the trust my grandmother built to manage three rental properties and two commercial buildings, an estate she had spent decades assembling so that I would always have ground of my own to stand on.
During the worst of my fertility treatments, when I was exhausted and grieving and could barely manage my own appointments, Damon had been granted limited authority to handle property expenses on my behalf.
A kindness, it had seemed at the time.
A husband stepping in while his wife was unwell.
That authority — narrow, temporary, meant only to keep the lights on in the buildings while I recovered — had been stretched, quietly and steadily, into something else entirely.
“We assumed at first that the assistant was just abusing her administrative access,” Naomi said, laying down a printout.
“That this was Sloane, freelancing.” She paused.
“It wasn’t only Sloane.”
Chapter 8 — Eight Days Before
