I found money that people hid. It was my whole career, until Julian convinced me to “focus on us” and step back, which I did, because I loved him, and because I didn’t yet understand that “focus on us” was the first move in slowly erasing me.
Six months before that hospital room, I’d found the first thread.
I was doing our household taxes — something Julian had always “handled,” which should have been my first clue — and a number didn’t fit.
A forensic accountant does not force a number that doesn’t fit.
She pulls it.
I pulled it, quietly, for six months, while I was pregnant, while Julian’s “late nights at the office” turned into Sienna, while his family started treating me colder and colder for reasons I now understood.
The thread led into the Vance family real estate company.