Chapter 2 - FIFTY MISSED CALLS
Three hours after David was taken away, I sat alone on the floor of Lily's bedroom.
It was the only room I hadn't emptied.
Her bed remained untouched.
Her stuffed rabbit rested against the pillow.
Seven glow-in-the-dark stars still clung to the ceiling.
A purple sweater hung over the back of her chair.
Her crayons were scattered across her little desk.
Everything looked as though she might come running through the door at any moment.
That was the cruelty of losing a child.
The world stopped for you.
But their room didn't know.
I picked up her rabbit.
Lily had named him Mr. Buttons when she was four.
She took him everywhere.
Except the hospital.
Everything had happened too quickly.
Three weeks earlier, Lily had complained about a headache.
By dinner, she had a fever.
By midnight, she was vomiting.
At 2:17 in the morning, I rushed her to the emergency room.
By sunrise, doctors were using words I couldn't understand because terror had turned my brain into static.
Meningitis.
Aggressive.
Critical.
Rapid deterioration.
They transferred her to intensive care.
I called David.
Once.
Twice.
Five times.
Ten.
No answer.
At eleven calls, he texted me.
In meetings.
Stop panicking.
I replied.
LILY IS IN THE ICU.
CALL ME NOW.
He never responded.
I called again.
Twenty times.
Thirty.
Forty.
Then came his final message.
Stop suffocating me with your anxiety, Maya.
I am on a digital detox trip for my mental health.
Do not contact me for the next two weeks.
I stared at that message while our daughter fought to breathe six feet away from me.
At 4:43 the following morning, Lily opened her eyes.
“Mama?”
I rushed to her bedside.
“I'm here.”
“Daddy coming?”
I lied.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
She smiled faintly.
“Tell him I wasn't scared.”
Those were the last clear words my daughter ever spoke.
Seven hours later, her heart stopped.
I called David again.
His phone went straight to voicemail.
I called fifty times in total.
He answered none of them.
Later, I learned why.
His yacht had satellite service.
David hadn't been unreachable.
He had blocked me.
A knock came from Lily's bedroom doorway.
Agent Hale stood there.
He had removed his jacket.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He nodded.
At least he didn't tell me I would be.
I appreciated that.
“Did he talk?”
“David?”
“Yes.”
“Not much.”
Hale leaned against the doorframe.
“He asked for his attorney.”
“Smartest thing he's done this month.”
“He also demanded to know where Lily is.”
My fingers tightened around Mr. Buttons.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Thank you.”
Hale studied the room.
“Eventually he'll find out.”
“I know.”
“You sure you want him finding out from someone else?”
I looked toward Lily's empty bed.
“I wanted him to answer his phone.”
Hale didn't argue.
He knew there was nothing to say.
The federal investigation had begun because of a phone call I'd made six days after Lily's funeral.
At first, I hadn't been looking for crimes.
I'd been looking for money.
David controlled nearly every financial aspect of our marriage.
After Lily died, I contacted our accountant because I intended to leave.
I wanted to know what assets legally belonged to me.
That's when I found the first discrepancy.
A transfer.
$780,000.
The destination was a company called Blue Meridian Consulting.
I'd never heard of it.
Then another.
$1.2 million.
Then another.
$940,000.
Over eighteen months, more than eleven million dollars had moved through companies I didn't recognize.
I assumed David was hiding money for the divorce.
I was wrong.
He wasn't hiding money from me.
He was hiding it from everyone.
Investors.
Banks.
His board.
And, apparently, the federal government.
When I confronted our accountant, he panicked.
Two hours later, he called me from a private number.
“Maya, don't ask me about Blue Meridian again.”
“Why?”
Silence.
Then he whispered something that changed everything.
“Because David doesn't own that money.”
I contacted an attorney.
The attorney contacted federal investigators.
And within forty-eight hours, Agent Marcus Hale was sitting across from me in a hotel conference room.
What followed was horrifyingly simple.
David's company had received federally backed infrastructure investment funds.
Millions were restricted for specific projects.
But shell companies had been siphoning portions away.
Blue Meridian was one.
There were seven others.
And one of them had paid for the yacht.
Hale walked toward Lily's desk.
“There was another development.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“We interviewed Julianne.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
“She says David told her the yacht belonged to a corporate client.”
“That doesn't surprise me.”
“She also gave us access to her messages.”
That surprised me.
Hale removed his phone.
“There are references to overseas accounts.”
I stood.
“What kind of references?”
“David appears to have planned a permanent transfer of assets.”
“When?”
Hale looked directly at me.
“Three days after he returned.”
I felt cold.
“Returned from the Bahamas?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We're still determining that.”
Then Hale hesitated.
There was something else.
“What aren't you telling me?”
He turned the screen toward me.
It was a message from David to Julianne.
Only one sentence.
Once the Chicago transfer clears, Maya and the kid become someone else's problem.
My hands began shaking.
The kid.
Not Lily.
Not our daughter.
The kid.
Hale lowered the phone.
“Maya, we believe David wasn't planning to come home from his next business trip.”
I stared at Lily's photograph on the desk.
David had been preparing to disappear.
But there was something neither of us knew yet.
Something hidden inside the company's financial records.
May you like
A transaction made on the exact morning Lily died.
And when investigators traced where that money went, David Vance's affair would become the smallest secret they uncovered.
