Chapter 12 - VANESSA FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT FOUR MILLION COST
Vanessa asked to see me after prosecutors informed her she could face charges connected to fraudulent approvals.
I agreed only with attorneys present.
She arrived looking smaller than she had at the gala.
No designer dress.
No communications-director smile.
Just a woman realizing ambition had become evidence.
“I didn’t know about Marcus,” she said immediately.
“I believe that.”
Hope flickered in her eyes.
Then I continued.
“That doesn’t make you innocent.”
She looked down.
“Julian told me the approvals were aggressive accounting. He said everyone did it during restructuring.”
“You signed seventeen.”
“I trusted him.”
The irony was almost painful.
“You told the company I was unemployed.”
Her face tightened.
“That has nothing to do with fraud.”
“No. It has to do with us.”
She started crying.
“I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
“Everyone else had husbands who were partners, bankers, CEOs. You never wanted anything. You wore cheap clothes. You drove that ridiculous sedan.”
I stared at her.
“You were ashamed that I didn’t perform wealth for your coworkers.”
“I didn’t know you had wealth!”
“You knew I was your husband.”
That ended the argument.
For a moment, she sat silently.
Then she whispered:
“I really did love you.”
“I think you loved the version of me you believed you could stand above.”
She flinched.
Maybe unfair.
Maybe true.
She eventually entered a cooperation agreement. The government differentiated between approvals she knowingly falsified and transactions whose criminal purpose Julian concealed from her. Her legal exposure remained real. Her career at NorthStar was over.
The divorce was simpler.
There was no battle over the Reed Horizon Trust.
No hidden jackpot.
No dramatic half-company settlement.
She received what the law and our marital agreements entitled her to.
Nothing more.
When the papers were signed, she asked one last question.
“If I had known who you were, would any of this have happened?”
I thought about the gala.
The water on Mom’s face.
The secret recording.
Her laughter when she called me nothing.
“Yes,” I said.
“Maybe differently.”
May you like
That was worse.
She understood.
