Chapter 3 - MY NAME HAD BEEN STEALING MONEY WHILE I SLEPT
By ten that morning, I was sitting in Collins Precision’s boardroom in Manassas.
I had slept less than two hours.
I still wore the same black rash guard beneath a borrowed blazer.
My mother sat across from me.
Judge Rebecca Collins had retired from the Fairfax County Circuit Court three years earlier, and retirement had not improved her tolerance for foolishness.
She looked at the bruise on my arm.
Then at the photographs of Ethan’s belt.
Then at the forged guarantee.
“Do you want me to call somebody?”
“I already called everybody.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
I knew what she meant.
“Not yet.”
She nodded.
My mother had never liked Ethan.
She had also never told me not to marry him.
When I asked why once, she said, “You were thirty-four years old. I raised an adult, not a juror.”
Now she tapped the fraudulent account statement.
“This is bigger than a bad husband.”
“I know.”
Our CFO, Nina Patel, entered carrying her laptop.
Nina and I had known each other since graduate school.
She was one of three people at Collins Precision who could authorize transfers above $100,000.
I was another.
The third was our CEO, Grant Ellis.
Nina closed the door.
“I pulled every transaction involving Price Capital.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-eight.”
I stared at her.
“Twenty-eight?”
“Over eleven months.”
“Why have I never seen that vendor?”
“You have.”
She turned the screen around.
The vendor was not called Price Capital.
It was called PAC Strategic Facilities.
I recognized it.
A consultant hired the previous year to evaluate whether Collins Precision should consolidate warehouse leases.
“Howard recommended them.”
“Yes.”
“He said one of his former partners owned it.”
Nina nodded.
“We paid PAC just over one point three million dollars.”
“For warehouse consulting?”
“That’s the problem.”
Nina opened the invoices.
Site feasibility.
Lease negotiations.
Environmental review.
Market analysis.
The invoices looked professional.
Some even referenced real company projects.
But when Nina compared deliverables, most were thin.
Two reports copied material from public county documents.
One valuation had been performed by another firm.
A supposed environmental review had never occurred.
“Who approved them?”
I already knew the answer.
Nina turned the screen.
MAYA COLLINS.
My credentials.
Not always my signature.
Our expense system used multifactor authorization.
“How?”
Nina swallowed.
“You added a secondary device.”
“No.”
She looked miserable.
“I processed the request.”
“When?”
“Last August.”
“I was in Seattle.”
“You called me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t.”
Nina’s face changed.
“I know your voice.”
“Apparently somebody else did too.”
She opened an audio file.
My voice filled the room.
“Nina, hey. I’m boarding in ten. Ethan’s helping me with family investments and some vendor reconciliation. Add his phone as backup until I’m back. I don’t want anything held because I’m traveling.”
My mother looked at me.
“That isn’t you?”
“No.”
It sounded like me.
Close enough that my stomach dropped.
The rhythm was slightly stiff.
The laugh at the end was wrong.
But if my best friend heard it between meetings?
I understood.
Nina whispered, “I should’ve called you back.”
“Yes.”
She flinched.
I reached across the table.
“And that doesn’t make you the person who did this.”
Her eyes filled.
My mother watched us.
“Can you identify the source?”
Nina nodded.
“Request came from Maya’s email.”
I felt cold.
Ethan had access to my old iPad while helping plan our wedding.
I had logged into company email once when my laptop died.
The access had been revoked later.
Or I thought it had.
Nina continued.
“Once his phone was secondary MFA, someone could approve invoices under your credentials.”
“Where did PAC’s money go?”
“We’re tracing.”
“Start now.”
“Already did.”
The first layer was simple.
Collins Precision paid PAC Strategic Facilities.
PAC deposited the payments into an account at Commonwealth Atlantic Bank.
Then PAC transferred roughly eighty percent to the Fulton Mercer investment account opened in my identity.
From there, money went to Price Capital.
The arrangement made Price Capital’s incoming funds look like investments from me rather than direct company payments.
My name sat in the middle.
A laundering layer built from my own reputation.
Grant Ellis joined us just before noon.
He had run Collins Precision operationally since my father’s cancer diagnosis.
He was sixty, blunt, and almost impossible to embarrass.
That day he looked sick.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
My mother said, “That sentence has not improved anyone’s morning.”
Grant ignored her.
“Howard approached me before the wedding.”
“When?”
“May.”
“About what?”
“Selling Price Capital a parcel behind our Manassas plant.”
My forehead tightened.
“We aren’t selling that parcel.”
“I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were reconsidering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know.”
“Now?”
“I know now.”
Grant sat.
“He showed me an email from you.”
Nina muttered something under her breath.
Grant opened his phone.
The email was sent from my personal address.
Grant,
Ethan and I are consolidating some holdings after the wedding. His family may purchase the rear parcel if appraisal works. Please keep this quiet until I’m ready to discuss with Mom.
Maya
My mother leaned forward.
“Why mention me?”
“Because I would’ve asked her,” Grant said.
The email had anticipated that.
I looked at the date.
Two days after Ethan and I signed our prenup.
“What happened after?”
“I told Howard any land sale required formal approval.”
“And?”
“He stopped asking.”
My phone buzzed.
Rachel.
I put her on speaker.
“We found the ownership record for PAC Strategic Facilities.”
“Howard?”
“No.”
“Ethan?”
“No.”
“Who?”
A name I recognized.
Lauren Price.
Ethan’s older sister.
The one member of his family who had skipped our wedding.
The sister Ethan told me had not spoken to him in four years.
Rachel continued.
“PAC is registered entirely to Lauren.”
I stared at Ethan’s family photo still sitting on my office shelf.
“Lauren lives in Oregon.”
“She used to.”
“What do you mean?”
“The company’s registered address is in Arlington.”
“Where?”
Rachel read it.
I knew the building.
It was three blocks from my townhouse.
Then Nina said, “Maya.”
She had opened the PAC bank records.
“What?”
“Lauren didn’t receive the PAC money.”
“Who did?”
Nina pointed to the authorized signatory.
Ethan Price.
He had been operating a company in his estranged sister’s name.
Then we opened PAC’s formation documents.
Lauren’s signature appeared six times.
The problem was not that I knew Lauren’s handwriting.
The problem was the date.
May you like
PAC had been created fourteen months ago.
Lauren Price had been dead for sixteen months.
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