The money wasn’t disappearing exactly.
It was being used, but not for the business.
Renovations on a property Daniel owned under a different LLC, a car, travel, and I realized as I read, gifts.
Expensive ones.
The kind you give someone you’re trying to impress.
Margaret had discovered it by accident 18 months ago when Daniel had asked her, during a visit before her condition had progressed, to help him organize some files.
She was sharp and she was thorough, and she understood financial documents, having spent 20 years as a hospital administrator before her diagnosis.
She had seen immediately what she was looking at.
She had confronted him privately.
He had told her she was misreading it.
When she pushed back, he had told her that if she made any of it public, he would make sure she lost access to the health insurance she was dependent on through his plan.
The plan I had been managing for her since she moved in with us.
The plan he’d threatened to remove her from twice already in passing, always framed as just thinking practically about costs.
He had threatened his sick sister into silence.
I sat with that for a long moment.
“You’re not misreading it,” I said finally.
“No,” Margaret said. “I’m not.”
“How much?”
She told me the number.
I nodded slowly.
“And Russell has no idea.”
“None. He thinks the firm is struggling due to market conditions. Daniel has been feeding him a story for two years.”
I looked at the folder in my lap.
Then I looked at Margaret.
“Why are you telling me now?”
“You’re not on his health plan anymore. He can’t threaten you.”
She met my eyes.
“Because you deserve to know before you signed anything. And I was too afraid to tell you before.”
She paused.
“And because what he did to you, what he’s been doing, wasn’t right. None of it was right.”
I reached across and covered her hand with mine.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
I want to be clear about something.
I did not go looking for revenge.
That’s not who I am, and it’s not what this was.
What I did was go looking for a lawyer.
Her name was Patricia Oay, and she had been recommended to me by a colleague at work who described her as the kind of person you want in your corner and terrifying to be across from.
I met with her the following Tuesday.
I brought Margaret and the folder.
Patricia read through everything twice, asked us both a series of very precise questions, and then leaned back in her chair and said, “This is securities fraud. This is also breach of fiduciary duty to the partner. And depending on how these investor agreements were structured, potentially wire fraud.”
She looked at me.
“Did you sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of your separation?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She looked at Margaret.
“Are you willing to provide a formal statement?”
Margaret straightened in her chair.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
Patricia filed a complaint with the relevant regulatory bodies on a Thursday.
By the following Monday, Russell Hargrove had been contacted.
By Wednesday, his own attorney had launched a parallel civil action.
Within three weeks, Hargrove Consulting’s accounts had been frozen pending investigation, and Daniel had received formal notice that he was the subject of a financial fraud inquiry.
I heard about it from Jaime.
Actually, she’d overheard Daniel on the phone when she was at his place for her weekend visit, and she came home and told me very seriously that Daddy was yelling and his face was really red.
I told her that sometimes adults had stressful situations at work.
She accepted this and went back to her book about sea turtles.
I will not pretend the next several months were easy.
They weren’t.
The investigation dragged on.
There were calls from Daniel’s personal lawyer, initially aggressive and then progressively less so.
There were weeks when I was tired in a way that went bone-deep, and I would sit at the kitchen table after Jaime and Margaret were asleep and just stare at nothing for a while.