Another former employee remembered me paying suppliers with money from my personal savings when the restaurant’s account ran low.
A third remembered Victor asking me to take my name off certain company paperwork after the fire.
“I told him it didn’t seem right,” she testified. “Mrs. Hale was the one who kept that restaurant running. Everybody knew it.”
Each statement filled in another piece of the story.
The restaurant had never been Victor’s achievement alone.
It had been ours.
And the records were finally beginning to show it.
The most painful discovery came from an old email account that had been preserved in the company’s archived files.
The email was sent by Victor to his accountant two months after the fire.
The subject line read: Ownership restructuring.
I read it in Grace’s office, my hands trembling.
Victor had written that the fire created an opportunity to simplify the company’s ownership before the insurance settlement was finalized.
