You approved the last seventeen.”
The number struck me.
Owen had found eighteen suspicious payments, including the latest one.
Graham knew exactly how many had cleared.
“Then one more night shouldn’t matter,” I said.
He stared at me long enough to make the room feel smaller.
Finally, he smiled.
“You’re right.
Get some sleep.”
He kissed the top of my head with the same lips that had touched Celeste’s forehead.
I waited until he went upstairs before messaging Marissa.
He confirmed knowledge of seventeen prior transfers.
Her response came immediately.
Documented.
I slept in the guest room with the door locked.
By 7:00 the next morning, Owen had completed a preliminary map of the money.
Westbridge Advisory Group had received $612,480 from my company.
Nearly $190,000 had been transferred directly to accounts controlled by Celeste.
Other payments had covered her apartment, private medical care, furniture, jewelry, and a deposit on a larger rental home they planned to move into after the baby’s birth.
The rest had flowed through accounts connected to Graham.
More damaging than the spending was the method.
Several invoices described projects that had never existed.
Others duplicated legitimate work already billed by Graham’s real firm.
The approval records carried my forged signature or credentials used from devices I had never owned.
Renee preserved the server logs before suspending the external vendor portal under a routine security review.
Graham still believed the latest payment was delayed by my mood.
At 9:15, he entered my office without knocking.
“The transfer hasn’t arrived.”
I looked up from my laptop.
“Accounting is reviewing it.”
“Why?”
“Routine verification.”
His jaw shifted.
“You don’t need to verify me.”
“Everyone gets verified eventually.”
For the first time since he came home, I saw fear flicker behind his irritation.
He covered it with anger.
“Do not humiliate me in front of your employees because you’re jealous of the attention Celeste got yesterday.”
“Why would I be jealous?”
“Because she has a child and you don’t.”
The sentence landed exactly where he intended.
For years, Graham had blamed timing, stress, and my workload whenever I raised the possibility of children.
He had refused fertility testing twice, insisting there was no reason to “medicalize” our marriage.
Now he had a son with my sister.
I closed my laptop.
“You should go see Celeste,” I said.
“She probably needs you.”
He searched my face for suspicion and found only the calm I had practiced all night.
“I’ll be back later,” he said.
As soon as his car left the driveway, Marissa arrived with Owen, a licensed investigator named Lena Ortiz, and two members of my company’s security team.
We worked from the dining room table where Celeste had once cried about being abandoned by the baby’s imaginary father.
By noon, Lena had obtained public filings, certified business records, and address histories linking Graham and Celeste to the shell company.
Owen identified the source document used to copy my signature: an authorization form from a charitable foundation dinner two years earlier.
Graham had witnessed me sign it.
A scanned copy had later been downloaded using his company credentials.
