“Thank you.”
She realized too late that she had done it again.
Victor grabbed her arm.
“Stop talking.”
Margaret pulled away.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
The room had become exactly what she had intended for me: a public chamber of judgment.
Only now she was standing in the center of it.
Daniel stepped down from the platform beside the coffin.
His legs were unsteady after lying still for so long, and I reached for his hand.
He took it.
That simple gesture caused another murmur.
Margaret had told everyone our marriage was destroyed.
Victor had told them Daniel discovered an affair.
Yet Daniel stood beside me by choice.
“There was no affair,” Daniel said.
Victor rolled his eyes.
“Of course you’d say that now.”
Daniel looked toward one of the reporters.
“Ask him for the proof.”
The reporter looked at Victor.
Victor said nothing.
Daniel continued.
“There isn’t any.
Because it never happened.”
Margaret folded her arms.
“Then explain why your wife was secretly examining company accounts.”
I answered.
“Because you were stealing from them.”
The sentence hit harder than shouting would have.
Margaret’s face went still.
I continued before she could interrupt.
“The transfers began as consulting expenses.
Then licensing payments.
Then vendor reimbursements.
Different names, same destination pattern.
Victor approved some.
You authorized others through accounts connected to family-controlled entities.”
Victor scoffed.
“You can’t prove that.”
“I already did.”
For the first time, fear appeared openly on his face.
I described the pattern without revealing anything that hadn’t already been preserved.
Duplicate invoices.
Approval timestamps.
Patent expenses routed through entities that benefited Margaret and Victor.
Altered records that existed in more than one version.
Daniel had quietly preserved the originals before they could be destroyed.
That was why Victor’s comment about burning files mattered.
He believed they still had time to erase what remained.
They did not.
Margaret looked at Daniel.
“You searched my records?”
“Company records,” he corrected.
“Your grandfather built that company.”
“And you were dismantling it one transfer at a time.”
