Chapter 2 - THE DEVICE INSIDE MY ACCOUNT
The $61,800 transfer disappeared from my banking screen three minutes after I reported it.
Not completed.
Frozen.
I called the bank before I called Eric.
My mother sat rigidly beside the hospital bed while I answered questions through clenched teeth.
“Yes, I’m the sole owner of the business.”
“No, my husband is not an authorized signer.”
“No, I did not initiate the transfer.”
The fraud specialist asked whether anyone could access my phone.
“My husband knows my old passcode.”
“Old?”
“I changed it two months ago.”
“Did you authorize another trusted device?”
“No.”
She became quiet.
“What?”
“There’s a device enrolled on the account.”
“When?”
“July seventeenth.”
Three weeks earlier.
I looked toward the hospital door.
“What kind of device?”
“I can’t identify the physical device from here. I can see the enrollment event and that the security confirmation came through your email.”
“I never confirmed anything.”
“We’re going to lock online access until we verify your identity.”
“Do it.”
“You may also want to secure your email immediately.”
I thanked her and ended the call.
Mom stood.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
I wanted to.
Instead, I looked through the glass wall across the hallway toward the nurses’ station.
“Can you find out when I can see Nora?”
“Maya.”
“Please.”
She studied me for a second, then nodded.
“I’ll ask.”
The moment she stepped out, I changed the password to my email.
Then my Apple account.
Then my payroll portal.
Then my credit card accounts.
I was halfway through freezing my credit when Eric walked in carrying coffee.
He had changed clothes.
Blue polo. Khaki shorts. Clean shoes.
I still smelled faintly of chlorine.
“Hey.”
I didn’t answer.
He placed the coffee beside me.
“Your mom said you were awake.”
“Where’s Diane?”
“Home.”
“With my twenty-three thousand dollars?”
His shoulders dropped.
“Can we not start?”
“Your mother lied about losing her house.”
“She’s under financial pressure.”
“She doesn’t have a landlord.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s rich.”
“What did you transfer from my business account?”
He stared at me.
Just long enough.
“What are you talking about?”
“Sixty-one thousand eight hundred dollars.”
His eyes went to my phone.
Not my face.
My phone.
“I don’t know anything about your business.”
“Somebody does.”
“I’ve been here all afternoon.”
“The transfer was set up before today.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Maya, our child is in intensive care.”
“I know exactly where our child is.”
“Then maybe act like it.”
The coffee cup shook when he picked it back up.
A small thing.
But I noticed.
“You emptied the money I saved for her delivery.”
“It was marital money.”
“You handed it to your mother using a fake housing emergency.”
“She needs help.”
“She lied.”
“She was embarrassed.”
“She lied.”
Eric lowered his voice.
“Do you hear yourself? Your daughter is hooked up to machines, and you’re talking about bank transactions.”
“That’s my job.”
“No. Your job right now is being her mother.”
“And yours?”
His mouth tightened.
I regretted the question almost immediately, because his expression became wounded in a way I had seen a hundred times.
It was Eric’s most effective trick.
He could turn accusation into injury so quickly that I would end up apologizing for noticing what he had done.
“I watched them carry my daughter away,” he said.
“You weren’t in the operating room.”
“Because you were rushed in.”
“I asked you to come.”
“I panicked.”
“You called your mother.”
“Jesus Christ, Maya.”
A nurse entered before either of us said more.
She checked my IV, glanced between us, and gave me the polite professional look people use when they know they have walked into a marriage they don’t want to understand.
“Dr. Patel will be back soon,” she said.
“When can I see my baby?”
“We’re going to try to get you upstairs as soon as you’re stable enough for the wheelchair.”
“What’s happening with Nora?”
“She’s breathing with support. The neonatologist will explain everything.”
Eric stepped closer.
“Can I see her?”
The nurse hesitated.
“NICU has already issued you a parent band, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can go up.”
He looked at me.
“I’ll check on her.”
I stared at him.
“Bring me a picture.”
Something softened in his face.
“I will.”
He leaned down to kiss my forehead.
I turned my head.
He stopped.
For half a second his hand tightened around the bed rail.
Then he left.
My mother came back ten minutes later.
I told her everything.
Not theories.
Facts.
The cashier’s check.
The frozen business transfer.
The trusted device.
The overheard conversation.
Mom listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she pulled the visitor chair closer.
“You need somebody from your firm.”
“I’m on medical leave.”
“You need somebody who knows what you know.”
She was right.
I called Tessa Monroe.
Tessa had worked beside me for six years at Holloway Price Forensics before I began taking private consulting assignments. She had been at the shower but left forty minutes before the argument because her son had a baseball tournament.
She answered on the first ring.
“Please tell me you and the baby are okay.”
“Nora’s in NICU.”
“Oh, Maya.”
“I need help.”
Her voice changed.
“What happened?”
“I think Eric has access to my business banking.”
Silence.
Then, “Tell me exactly what you have.”
I did.
Tessa did not say I was overreacting.
She did not tell me to focus on the baby.
She said, “Don’t investigate your own husband from a hospital bed.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m securing accounts.”
“Good. Then stop there. Preserve everything. Screenshots, emails, security notifications, call records. Don’t log into any of his devices.”
“I know.”
“I’m reminding you because you’re scared.”
I swallowed.
She continued.
“I’ll call Marissa.”
Marissa Feld was the firm’s outside counsel.
“No.”
“Maya, if he used your professional identity, this can touch your license.”
“I know.”
“That’s why we involve counsel.”
I looked through the glass at the nurses’ station.
“Call her.”
After we hung up, I searched my email for July seventeenth.
Hundreds of messages.
Client invoices.
Newsletters.
Hospital pre-registration.
Baby registry notifications.
Then I found one from my bank.
NEW TRUSTED DEVICE ADDED.
It had been opened.
Archived.
I never archived bank security alerts.
I opened the message details.
The confirmation had been completed at 2:14 a.m.
I remembered that night.
I had fallen asleep on the couch after working late.
Eric had carried my laptop upstairs because he complained that I always left it plugged into the living room.
My laptop had Face ID through Windows Hello.
But Eric knew the PIN.
I had given it to him two years earlier during a tax emergency.
I changed the email password again.
Then I searched my sent folder.
Nothing.
Trash.
Nothing.
The door opened.
Eric returned.
He held his phone out.
There was a photograph of Nora beneath a clear plastic incubator, a breathing tube taped beside her tiny mouth.
My anger vanished for three terrible seconds.
“She’s so small.”
“She squeezed my finger.”
“She did?”
“Yeah.”
I touched the screen.
“Can you send me that?”
“Of course.”
He sat down.
For a moment we were simply two frightened parents looking at our child.
Then my phone rang.
The bank.
I answered.
The same fraud specialist introduced herself.
“Mrs. Carter, we completed an initial review of the enrollment event.”
I looked at Eric.
He was watching me.
She continued.
“The trusted device was added using your email confirmation, as discussed. But there’s another piece of information you should know.”
“What?”
“The device had already been used to access your personal joint banking profile several times before it was enrolled on the business account.”
Eric stood.
“I’m going to get something to eat.”
I raised one finger.
He stopped.
The specialist continued.
“The access logs originate from your normal residential network.”
My stomach tightened.
“That could be any device in my house.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me the operating system?”
She did.
Windows 11.
Chrome.
My laptop used Windows 11.
So did Eric’s.
I asked, “Anything else?”
“There is one identifier associated with the enrollment profile.”
“What identifier?”
“The device nickname.”
I hadn’t known customers could nickname devices.
“What was it?”
The specialist read it aloud.
May you like
“ERIC-OFFICE.”
Across the room, my husband went completely still.
