I refreshed.
Same number.
My chest tightened.
There should have been almost $175,000.
I clicked transaction history.
Three outgoing wires.
$59,000.
$58,000.
$55,000.
All initiated the previous afternoon.
All to an account I didn’t recognize.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Claire.”
“I’m here.”
“It’s gone.”
“How much?”
“One seventy-two.”
Silence.
Then her voice became very calm.
“Don’t call Brandon.”
“What?”
“Screenshot everything. Download every transaction. Save account statements going back at least a year.”
“Claire, he stole—”
“Document first. Panic later.”
My hands shook as I opened the laptop.
That was when the thought came.
The missing $10,500.
Mom.
The accusation.
The ultimatum.
The transfers.
All on the same day.
Maybe the money Brandon claimed my mother had stolen had never disappeared at all.
Maybe he needed her out.
Maybe he needed me angry.
Maybe he needed a fight large enough to make me leave voluntarily.
Claire came to the hotel again before ten.
By noon, we were sitting in a conference room at her firm with another attorney named David Klein, who specialized in divorce and financial litigation.
He reviewed the banking records.
“These transfers were authorized using Brandon’s credentials,” he said.
“Can we reverse them?”
“Maybe. Depends where the funds went.”
He turned his laptop toward us.
“What’s this entity?”
The recipient was listed as Northstar Holdings LLC.
I shook my head.
“Never heard of it.”
David typed.
A minute later, his eyebrows lifted.
“Registered four months ago.”
“To whom?”
He hesitated.
“Not Brandon.”
My stomach turned.
“Who?”
“Lucas Mercer.”
Brandon’s brother.
The same Lucas whose wedding I had helped pay for.
