What Victor Already Knew
Chapter 04 - What Victor Already Knew
The printout listed transfers, dozens of them, small enough individually to avoid triggering the usual scrutiny, moving out of a Hayes Industries subsidiary account and into something labeled only as Crestline Consulting LLC.
Ava scanned each line twice, her finger tracing the dates, months she remembered clearly for entirely different reasons. A weekend trip to the coast, right after one of the larger transfers. A new watch Julian had worn to a company gala, one she'd complimented without ever once asking where the money for it had actually come from.
"Two point one million dollars," Victor said quietly. "Over fourteen months. Routed through a shell company registered to an address that doesn't exist."
Ava's hands were shaking as she scanned the dates. "This is company money. Not ours."
"It's both," Victor said. "Julian had signing authority as your husband, on paper, through the family trust I set up when you two married. I built that access thinking I was protecting my daughter's future. Instead I handed him a door."
Ava felt sick, the specific nausea of understanding that her own marriage had apparently been quietly bleeding her father's company for over a year while she'd been focused entirely on morning sickness and nursery colors and whether Julian's moods were something she was imagining or something real.
"Why didn't you say something four months ago," she asked. "When you first found this."
Victor was quiet a long moment, something in his expression she hadn't seen from him before. Not anger. Something closer to shame.
"Because I needed proof strong enough that he couldn't talk his way out of it," Victor said. "And because, God help me, I was hoping I was wrong. I was hoping the money would turn out to be some legitimate business arrangement I simply hadn't been informed about."
He rubbed a hand over his face, looking, for a moment, like a man carrying considerably more weight than the last five minutes alone could account for.
"I've built a career out of trusting numbers over people," he added quietly. "I told myself, waiting for absolute proof, that I was simply being thorough. I think, if I'm honest with myself tonight, some part of me didn't want to believe my own daughter's marriage was actually this broken."
"And tonight told you it wasn't," Ava said.
"Tonight told me considerably more than that," Victor said. "Marcus called me the moment the cameras picked up Julian tearing your desk apart three days ago. I've had someone watching this house every night since, waiting to see exactly how far he'd go if he thought no one was paying attention."
Ava stared at her father, something between gratitude and fury rising in her chest at once. "You used me as bait."
"I used every resource I had to protect you," Victor said, "the fastest way I knew how, without giving him time to disappear with that money and whatever leverage he thought he still had over this family."
"Leverage," Ava repeated. "What leverage."
Victor's face changed then, just slightly, a flicker of something Ava had never once seen cross her father's expression in her entire life.
Fear.
"That's a conversation for tomorrow," he said, standing quickly, smoothing his jacket like the movement might smooth over whatever he'd almost said out loud. "Tonight you rest. Tomorrow, we deal with everything Julian actually knows."
Ava caught his sleeve before he reached the door.
"Dad. What does he know."
Victor didn't turn around. "Something I've spent thirty years making sure nobody ever found out."
He stood there a moment longer, hand on the doorframe, and Ava watched his shoulders drop slightly, the posture of a man setting down some enormous weight he'd been carrying so long he'd nearly forgotten it was there.
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"Get some sleep if you can," he said finally, still not turning around. "Tomorrow's going to be a very long day."
He left before she could ask anything further, and Ava lay back against the pillows, one hand on her belly, staring at the ceiling and wondering exactly what kind of secret could put that particular look on her father's face.
