Not publicly. Not yet.
But behind closed doors, men and women who had once returned Dominic’s calls within minutes began forwarding him to assistants. His Monday board meeting was postponed. Two investors requested clarification. One withdrew entirely, citing “unresolved due diligence concerns.”
The luxury SUV was remotely disabled in the private garage under our apartment building.
Dominic called the dealership first.
Then he called me.
Then he called my father.
My father did not answer.
At noon, a courier delivered a formal notice to Dominic’s office stating that Brooks Family Holdings had revoked his authorization to operate company-owned vehicles and access family properties.
At 12:14, Dominic sent me one message.
You think your father can scare me?
At 12:16, he sent another.
Remember, Audrey. I know things too.
My hands went cold.
Marianne read it and immediately asked, “What could he mean?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
But that was not entirely true.
There was one thing Dominic knew.
Not about my father.
About me.
During our first year of marriage, before things turned bitter, before ambition swallowed his tenderness, I had told Dominic something I had never told anyone outside my family.
When I was twenty-two, I had signed away my formal claim to my mother’s trust for a period of ten years.
Not because I did not want it.
Because after my mother died, grief had made wealth feel obscene. My father had urged me to wait until I was ready. So the trust remained locked under a special provision.
Dominic knew I could not directly access that fortune until my thirty-second birthday.
Which was three months away.
He had loved that detail once. He said it proved I was grounded.
Now, I wondered whether he had loved it for another reason.
That afternoon, my father’s investigator found the first hidden account.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Dominic had been moving money out of VanceTech for nearly eight months, labeling the transfers as consulting fees to firms that did not exist beyond mailing addresses and empty websites.
One firm was registered under Arthur’s golf club address.
Another used Natalie’s old college apartment.
The third belonged to Victoria.
I sat in bed, listening as Marianne explained it, one hand resting on Leo’s back.
“So his entire family was involved,” I said.
“We don’t know that yet,” she said carefully.
My father’s expression said he did.
A laugh rose in my throat and died there.
Victoria had called me a burden.
Natalie had called me lucky.
Arthur had barely looked at his grandson.
All while they were feeding from the company Dominic built on my family’s shadow.
“They’ll blame me,” I said.