Chapter 4

Everything changed with a single shopping list.

It was a Saturday. David, who rarely got a day off, said he'd take Ryan downstairs to soak up some sun.

I was tidying up at home. When I got to the study, I noticed a stack of shipping receipts on the desk.

He never let me in the study, but he wasn't home today.

I wasn't snooping or anything. I happened to spot it while tidying up. The first receipt was for a skincare brand.

At first, I thought David bought it for me. But the recipient wasn't me.

It was Sophia Brown. The address was a neighborhood I'd never even heard of.

Flipping to the second one, I saw a designer bag sent to Sophia at the same address.

The third one was from a furniture store, a sofa addressed to Sophia.

I stood in the study, gripping those three shipping receipts in my hand.

Ryan was downstairs, and so was David. I could hear my own heart pounding.

Then I did what an accountant would naturally do. I snapped photos of the three receipts, put them back exactly where I found them, not a single thing out of place.

My phone buzzed with a new message from David: [Ryan's getting sleepy. We're heading upstairs.]

I left the study and closed the door behind me.

When he walked in, I was folding laundry.

"Why was the study door open?" he asked.

"The wind must've blown it open. I'll go close it," I replied.

David glanced at me, but didn't say a word.

That night, I couldn't sleep. Ryan was eleven months old. From pregnancy to now, it had been nearly two years.

I quit my job, spent all my savings, and now I was scraping by on 1000 bucks a month to keep the family afloat. Whenever I fall short, my mom steps in to help.

Over the past two years, I opened the transfer history and scrolled back one by one. The earliest transfer was from when Ryan was three months old, and there were two months where an extra payment went through. Those were for Ryan's vaccines.

Then there was Christmas, when my mom gave Ryan a gift. I added it all up, line by line.

When the final number appeared after the last entry, I froze for a moment, not because it was a lot, but because I'd never thought to add it up before. The total was 15 thousand.

Actually, she left herself about 300 every month.

I slammed my phone down on the table. The names from those three shipping receipts came back to haunt me.

The total cost of those three delivery receipts was more than my mom's pension for two entire months.

I walked into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, but didn't drink it. I stood there, lost in thought.

The next day was Monday. David left for work. After settling Ryan, I turned on the computer.

The browser was still logged into his shopping account. He must've forgotten to sign out after working from home.

I went through his shopping history like an accountant on a mission. Turned out, those three orders to Sophia were the tip of the iceberg.

I scrolled back over the past six months. Skincare, clothes, bags, small appliances, furniture, pretty much everything. The pattern was steady, one or two orders every couple of weeks.

I didn't go any further. Shopping records alone weren't enough. I'm an accountant, which meant I knew that numbers only matter when they told the whole story.

*****

Going through his accounts took me three whole weeks, not a quick glance for three days.

Three days wouldn't cut it. I needed the full money trail, not a couple of random payments, but the entire chain from start to finish.

I started by organizing the evidence I already had.

First, David's salary card. I don't have the password, but I know which bank it's from. Every month on the first, he sends a screenshot to our family group chat. The screenshot always showed the balance.

Second, his shopping platform records. I'd already exported the last six months.

Third, his credit card statements. This one was a lucky find. He set up email billing, and once logged into that email on my computer. The password was saved automatically.

Fourth, his transfer records. This one took some time.

The first three pieces of evidence took me three days. The fourth? Over two weeks. The method wasn't complicated.

He had text alerts for every transfer, but those alerts went to a different number, and I found that number's billing statements in his email.

The carrier sent an electronic bill every month, and when I opened it, I could see the recipient and amount for each transfer. It wasn't as detailed as a bank statement, but it was enough.

That was when I spotted a pattern. Every month, right around the 15th, there was a transfer of 6000, always to Sophia.

Starting from two years ago, including everything he'd sent her through online stores, the total came to around 50 thousand over that period.

Including that sofa and other big-ticket furniture. The address was in a residential complex, which probably meant Sophia had her own apartment there.

I looked up the name of the complex online. But I didn't find any property registered under David. What I did find was a commercial space for lease.

It was a shop on the ground floor of the same complex, a coffee place called Sophia's Cafe. The storefront photo showed that the place was newly renovated.

I also looked up the business registration records. It was a sole proprietorship. The owner was listed as Sophia, and it had been registered a year and a half earlier.

David sent Sophia 6000 every month. A year and a half ago, she opened Sophia's Cafe. One didn't need to be an auditor to see the connection between those two things.

I gathered all the evidence and organized it into a folder, not an Excel file, a regular manila folder.

I printed out the transfer screenshots, the shopping records, the email statements, and even the real estate listing for her shop.

Page by page, I sorted everything in order. The last sheet was a summary table I put together myself, tracking where David's money went since the day I got pregnant, three years ago.

His total salary income came to about 1.8 million. He had given me around 36,000 for living expenses, his mother 96,000, and transferred roughly 160,000 to Sophia, plus about 50,000 in gifts for her from online stores.

He also spent around 100,000 on personal items, electronics, rackets, shoes, phones, and the like. That added up to about 442,000 in total, leaving roughly 1.4 million unaccounted for.

That 1.4 million was sitting in his own account. He gave me 1,000 a month. My mother, whose monthly pension is only 1300, had given me over 15 thousand. And what he gave Sophia was six times what he gave me.

What he had saved up was more than my mother had earned in her entire lifetime. I closed the folder and put it back in the deepest corner of the closet.

Ryan woke up, kicking his little feet in the crib. I went over and picked him up. "Mommy's here," I whispered, holding him close.