Chapter 5

I locked myself in my son's room.

He was away at college and living in a dorm, so the room had been empty for months.

Alex was still out there, pounding on the door.

"Jane, get out of here. Open the door. Do you hear me?"

Carol was cursing, and Lily kept feeding it, and the two of them together sounded like nails going down a chalkboard.

I let all of it go past me.

I sat down at the desk and took out the copies Michael had given me.

There was the share transfer agreement.

There were the dividend records from every year.

And there were the authorization letters, each one signed in Alex's own hand.

Every page was a knife going into me.

But they weren't wounds anymore.

They were weapons.

I took out my phone and made a call.

Michael had given me the number that afternoon, and it belonged to Joshua Williams, the company's lawyer.

"Mr. Williams, this is Jane Evans."

A steady, capable man's voice came back through the phone.

"Ms. Evans. Mr. Turner has already explained everything to me. What can I do for you?"

He had called me vice president.

The word left me a little unsteady.

But I got used to it quickly.

It had been my position all along.

"Mr. Williams, I need some advice.

"For more than ten years my husband forged my signature and collected every dividend on my shares, and the total is over seven million dollars.

"He moved all of it into a private account I knew nothing about.

"I want to know what that is under the law."

Joshua was quiet for a few seconds on the other end.

"Ms. Evans, if that's accurate, your husband is looking at fraud and embezzlement.

"The forged signatures and authorizations in particular are a very serious felony.

"With an amount that large, a conviction could carry a life sentence."

It could be a life sentence.

Something in me still pulled back.

He was my son's father, after all.

But the hesitation was swallowed almost at once by something much colder.

He had spent my money without blinking and put his sister in a Porsche, while I borrowed seven thousand dollars from coworkers.

He had never once stopped to think that I was the mother of his son.

The answer was no.

I couldn't go soft on him.

Going soft on him would only be cruelty toward myself.

I said, "Mr. Williams, I already have direct evidence that he collected those dividends.

"I also found the key to his safe deposit box at the bank.

"I believe the bank card and the rest of the asset records are inside that box.

"What should I do next?"

Joshua's voice was very serious. "Ms. Evans, whatever you do, don't let him know.

"You have the key to the box, and that's the important part.

"But the box is in your husband's name, so you can't open it by yourself.

"My advice is that we go to the court first thing tomorrow and ask for a freeze on his assets.

"With what you have, we can freeze every bank account and stock holding in his name, and the box as well.

"That keeps him from moving anything.

"After that we file the suit."

We would freeze all of it.

That was right.

That was the first step.

I was going to leave him without a cent to his name.

"All right. We'll do it your way. I'll be at the office at nine tomorrow morning."

I hung up and let out a long breath.

At some point, the noise outside the door had stopped.

They had probably worn themselves out.

I opened the door and walked out.

The living room was a wreck.

Takeout containers were everywhere.

Alex, Lily, and Carol were sitting on the couch like three bad omens.

When they saw me, three pairs of eyes turned on me with the same poison in them.

Alex spoke coldly, "So you came out. I thought you were going to stay in there for the rest of your life."

I didn't answer him.

I walked straight up to him and held out my hand.

"What?" He had no idea what was happening.

I said calmly, "The mortgage is due this month, and it's 4,000 dollars.

"There are also the association fees and the power and the water and the gas, and all of that comes to about 500 dollars. Give me the money."

Alex looked as though he had heard the funniest thing in the world. "Jane, is there something wrong with your head?

"You've paid for all of it for years. Now you're asking me for money?

"Don't I give you a thousand-dollar limit on that card every month?

"A thousand dollars isn't enough for you?"

Lily laughed from the side, with a nasty edge to it. "Exactly, Jane.

"Alex works himself to the bone out there. How do you have the nerve to ask him for money?

"Besides, you make 1,600 dollars a month. That covers a mortgage with room to spare."

Of course it did.

In their eyes, my 1,600 dollars a month was a fortune.

It was supposed to keep the whole family fed and pay off an enormous mortgage.

I looked at Alex and said it one word at a time.

"From today, my paycheck feeds one person, and that person is me.

"You're the man in this house and the head of it.

"Isn't providing for this family your job?

"Or is it something else."

I paused on purpose and let my eyes move over him.

"Do you actually have no money?

"Is all that talk about building a career out there only a cover?

"Have you been living off me this whole time?"

Alex snapped, "Don't you dare."

Those few sentences landed exactly on the sore spot.

The only thing he had ever cared about was that thin scrap of male pride.

He shot to his feet, pulled a card out of his wallet, and threw it down on the coffee table.

"Who says I have no money?

"There's seventeen thousand dollars on that card. Is that enough?

"Take it, pay the bills, and stop bothering me."

He thought that would put me back in my place.

But what I saw in front of me was a man who looked ridiculous and sad at the same time.

I didn't pick up the card.

I only looked at him coldly.

"Alex, since you have that much money, tomorrow we'll sit down and go through the accounts of this house.

"We'll see how much I have spent on this family in twenty years.

"And we'll see how much you have spent on it.

"We'll put every line of it down in black and white and settle it."

When I was done, I didn't look at him, though the shock on his face had already turned into something unsteady.

I walked back to the room and shut the door.

Outside, it was dead quiet.

I knew my words had planted a seed of doubt in him.

He had started to be afraid.

That was exactly what I had wanted.

The game was only beginning.