The first page carried Crestview Developments’ corporate letterhead.
Below it was a list of wire transfers I had never approved.
More than eighty thousand dollars had disappeared from company accounts over six months.
Almost all of it had been deposited directly into Brenda’s personal account.
And that was only the beginning.
Suddenly, the affair seemed almost insignificant compared with the financial records in front of me.
The transfers ranged from five thousand to ten thousand dollars at a time.
They weren’t coming from the daily operating account I monitored.
They were being withdrawn from a strategic reserve fund we had created years earlier for emergencies and major vendor obligations.
Andrew shook his head.
“She doesn’t make anything close to that kind of money. For months, she’s been telling me she sleeps at her parents’ house whenever she works late. I finally called them. She lied.”
I photographed every document.
Then I drove home.
The moment I stepped inside, I heard drawers slamming upstairs.
I followed the noise to our bedroom.
Ofelia was searching through my belongings.
My dresses were scattered across the floor.
Files had been pulled from drawers.
A wooden box holding my father’s old keepsakes had been overturned.
“What exactly are you looking for?” I asked.
She didn’t even look embarrassed.
“Mark needs the security tokens and reserve-account records. He has urgent vendor payments.”
“They’re not here.”
Ofelia clicked her tongue.
“No wonder my son got tired of you. Whenever he needs something, you make everything difficult.”
What she didn’t know was that weeks earlier, I had moved the company’s master deeds, powers of attorney, and banking-security hardware into a private safe-deposit box.
That evening, Mark returned home looking restless.
Before dinner had even ended, the doorbell rang.
Brenda stood outside.
She had somehow transformed back into the polished secretary everyone knew.
She claimed she had brought “urgent documents” for Mark’s signature.
Ofelia welcomed her as though she were family.
“Brenda, sweetheart! You work so hard for my son.”
Brenda sat at our dining table drinking coffee.
Then she looked at me with a smug smile.
“Laura really has such a talent for domestic things.”
Ofelia laughed.
Mark said nothing.
