{"id":14384,"date":"2026-09-19T17:40:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T17:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/?p=14384"},"modified":"2026-09-19T17:40:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T17:40:42","slug":"part-2-the-beating-was-not-the-secret-ethan-feared-most-and-the-missing-money-gave-me-the-first-reason-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/?p=14384","title":{"rendered":"PART 2 \u2013 The Beating Was Not the Secret Ethan Feared Most, and the Missing Money Gave Me the First Reason Why"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Detective Ruiz had barely finished asking for the name of the forensic firm when a technician arrived to take me for imaging.<\/p>\n<p>The interruption frustrated me more than it should have. My body was clearly injured, yet my mind had already returned to numbers. Numbers were safer. They stayed where they were placed. They did not apologize after hurting you. They did not insist you had misunderstood them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHalden Forensic Advisory,\u201d I told Ruiz before the technician released the bed brakes. \u201cThe lead investigator is Claire Donnelly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz wrote it down.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t call from my phone,\u201d I added.<\/p>\n<p>She looked up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause Ethan had access to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam\u2019s expression tightened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor how long?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLong enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That answer made him angry, though not at me.<\/p>\n<p>I could see it in his jaw.<\/p>\n<p>The hospital corridor rolled past while the technician pushed my bed toward radiology. White doors, gray floors, the low murmur of conversations behind curtains. Every turn hurt my ribs.<\/p>\n<p>When we returned, Priya was waiting with results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have two cracked ribs,\u201d she said. \u201cA concussion, significant soft-tissue injuries, and bruising that we need to monitor. I\u2019m concerned about the marks on your neck, so we\u2019re doing additional imaging to make sure there isn\u2019t vascular damage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam stood behind her with his arms folded.<\/p>\n<p>He looked as if each injury had been written personally against him.<\/p>\n<p>Priya noticed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChief.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not saying anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour face is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked away.<\/p>\n<p>Despite everything, a tiny laugh escaped me.<\/p>\n<p>Pain immediately stabbed through my side.<\/p>\n<p>Priya gave me a look.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTry not to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNoted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After she left, Liam dragged the chair closer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou told me you were leaving Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s Thursday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou had an apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA separate account.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you still went home last night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I turned toward him slowly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere else was I supposed to go without tipping him off?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe watched my location.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would have turned your phone off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe checked mileage on the car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would have picked you up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe watched the camera system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam stopped.<\/p>\n<p>That list had grown normal in my mind.<\/p>\n<p>Hearing it aloud transformed it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a plan,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou were unconscious on your kitchen floor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His voice sharpened on the last words.<\/p>\n<p>I flinched.<\/p>\n<p>He saw it instantly.<\/p>\n<p>Regret crossed his face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaya.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. Don\u2019t apologize because I reacted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shouldn\u2019t have raised my voice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re angry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His answer came immediately.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I believed him.<\/p>\n<p>That made it worse somehow.<\/p>\n<p>Liam stood and walked to the sink.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI almost drove to your house last night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stared at his back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou stopped answering around eleven.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ethan had taken my phone before then.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat stopped you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t answering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot last night. Before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He turned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou made me promise that I wouldn\u2019t confront him. You said if I appeared unexpectedly, Ethan would know you had told me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I sat in my car and convinced myself that respecting your plan was the same as protecting you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His voice went unsteady.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI should have gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t know what would have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s exactly the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLiam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy entire job is recognizing danger before I know every detail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re not responsible for what Ethan did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen neither are you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The answer silenced me.<\/p>\n<p>I had spent so long thinking in terms of prevention\u2014what I should not say, where I should not stand, which subjects should not be raised after Ethan drank\u2014that responsibility had become confused with strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing how to reduce danger was not the same as causing it.<\/p>\n<p>Detective Ruiz returned before either of us could say more.<\/p>\n<p>She had made several calls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour husband has been moved out of the treatment area. Officers are interviewing him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHas he been arrested?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause an investigation is not the same thing as an immediate arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did he tell them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz hesitated, then said, \u201cHe claims you had wine, became confused after falling, and struck him when he tried to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stared at her.<\/p>\n<p>Liam swore under his breath.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz continued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe also says some of the marks on your arms may have happened while he restrained you to prevent you from hurting yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course.<\/p>\n<p>The story was already evolving.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019ll say I\u2019m unstable,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz watched me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019ll talk about anxiety. I saw a therapist. Secretly, for panic attacks and insomnia. He found one appointment on a statement months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you experiencing anxiety?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat doesn\u2019t explain fractured ribs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at her.<\/p>\n<p>The simplicity of the statement steadied me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019ll make everything sound reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy job isn\u2019t to reward whoever sounds most confident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz sat beside the bed again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy job is to identify facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Facts.<\/p>\n<p>That was a language I understood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy brother has evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEncrypted copies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do they contain?\u201d Ruiz asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhotographs. Screenshots. Financial documents. Dates of prior incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinancial documents related to your marriage?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked toward the door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaya,\u201d Liam said quietly.<\/p>\n<p>It was not a warning to stop.<\/p>\n<p>It was an invitation to slow down.<\/p>\n<p>I had never told him the whole financial story.<\/p>\n<p>I realized I did not want secrets anymore simply because secrecy had kept me alive yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hired Halden six months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam frowned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought Halden was helping you trace marital assets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were doing that too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToo?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were reviewing Apex.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyebrows rose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll of it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs much as I could give them without alerting Ethan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz opened her notebook again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat triggered the audit?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFourteen thousand eight hundred dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam looked baffled.<\/p>\n<p>I almost smiled.<\/p>\n<p>Apex handled projects worth tens of millions. To him, the number sounded insignificant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the first payment,\u201d I said. \u201cA vendor called Northline Strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did they do?\u201d Ruiz asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was no documentation telling me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo invoice?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo meaningful one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cContract?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNone I found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho approved the payment?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the problem. It was below the level requiring enhanced review.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I remembered discovering it late one night while Ethan slept upstairs.<\/p>\n<p>The payment had looked dull.<\/p>\n<p>That was why it bothered me.<\/p>\n<p>Fraud rarely arrived labeled fraud.<\/p>\n<p>It hid inside boring things.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNorthline wasn\u2019t alone,\u201d I said. \u201cHalden found other vendors with similar patterns. Different names, different banks, different service descriptions. Nearly all of them received payments just below internal thresholds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow much altogether?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver four years? Roughly three point two million.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam sat back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree million dollars disappeared and nobody noticed?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot disappeared. Distributed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo fake companies?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPossibly. Some were legitimate entities on paper. That\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz nodded as though she understood the distinction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShell companies?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome may be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConnected to your husband?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI haven\u2019t proven that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the audit concerned him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe audit concerned transactions he had authority over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was the accountant in me speaking.<\/p>\n<p>Precise.<\/p>\n<p>Reluctant to claim what evidence had not yet established.<\/p>\n<p>The wife in me knew something different.<\/p>\n<p>Ethan had hit me after discovering the audit.<\/p>\n<p>He had demanded access.<\/p>\n<p>Then he had kept hitting me when I refused.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz asked, \u201cHow involved were you in Apex\u2019s finances?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOriginally? Very.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam gave a humorless laugh.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s an understatement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Years earlier, Ethan\u2019s business had occupied two rented rooms above a commercial printer. When I met him, he had ambition, charm, and no instinct for financial discipline.<\/p>\n<p>He could sell an idea faster than anyone I knew.<\/p>\n<p>He could not build a balance sheet that survived inspection.<\/p>\n<p>After my father died, I had poured myself into work.<\/p>\n<p>Ethan\u2019s company gave me a problem I could solve.<\/p>\n<p>There were overdue taxes, hostile creditors, disputed invoices, a former partner threatening litigation, and cash-flow shortages disguised by optimism.<\/p>\n<p>I rebuilt it.<\/p>\n<p>My father\u2019s trust supplied capital in exchange for preferred ownership rights. I created holding companies, renegotiated debt, and insisted on protections that Ethan thought were boring paperwork.<\/p>\n<p>He rarely read anything beyond the signature pages.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, his carelessness had amused me.<\/p>\n<p>Now it looked different.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo your trust still controls voting rights?\u201d Ruiz asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes Ethan know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe knows the documents exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat wasn\u2019t the question.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I glanced at Liam.<\/p>\n<p>He said nothing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tried to explain the structure when we signed it. Ethan was focused on when the money would arrive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMeaning?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMeaning he may believe he controls Apex because he is CEO and the public founder.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut legally?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy trust has majority voting control under certain provisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz tapped her pen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCould you remove him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPotentially.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam stared at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes he know that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That answer now felt dangerously naive.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe Ethan had understood much more than I believed.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe his contempt for paperwork had been performance.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz asked, \u201cWhy commission the audit instead of exercising control immediately?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause if three million dollars had moved improperly, removing Ethan without understanding the network could destroy evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd because you were leaving him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The two matters had seemed separate when I began.<\/p>\n<p>One investigation was about my husband.<\/p>\n<p>The other was about his company.<\/p>\n<p>Tonight had joined them.<\/p>\n<p>I told Ruiz about the email Ethan saw.<\/p>\n<p>Halden had written to confirm that an independent data preservation request was ready for my approval.<\/p>\n<p>Ethan had come home unusually early carrying champagne.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe saw the subject line,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did he ask?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst he wanted to know what I had authorized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Liam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe asked how much Halden knew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz stopped writing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot why you hired them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot whether you suspected him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow much they knew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The silence that followed told me she understood why that mattered.<\/p>\n<p>Liam leaned forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened next?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI closed the laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou didn\u2019t answer him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe asked for the password.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My palms grew damp.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told him it wasn\u2019t his business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam looked as though he wanted to interrupt but forced himself not to.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEthan picked up the laptop. I told him to put it down. He asked again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The memory sharpened with each sentence.<\/p>\n<p>The cold bottle of champagne on the counter.<\/p>\n<p>Water running from the faucet because I had been washing strawberries.<\/p>\n<p>The soft refrigerator hum.<\/p>\n<p>Ordinary details surrounding violence were always the ones that stayed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe grabbed my wrist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz asked, \u201cDid you resist?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tried to pull away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did he do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe pushed me into the pantry door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I swallowed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first time wasn\u2019t hard enough to knock me down. The second was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam stared at the floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe wanted the password while you were on the ground?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you still refused?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz\u2019s pen moved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember him kicking me. After that, there are gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen did you regain awareness?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce in the car, maybe. I heard him talking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnything you remember could matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n<p>There had been road noise.<\/p>\n<p>A turn signal clicking.<\/p>\n<p>Ethan breathing hard.<\/p>\n<p>Then his voice.<\/p>\n<p>Not speaking to me.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on the phone.<\/p>\n<p>I opened my eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe called someone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz straightened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My pulse quickened as the fragment surfaced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said, \u2018She wouldn\u2019t open it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam looked up sharply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOpen what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI assumed he meant the files.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid he say anything else?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I concentrated until my head hurt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said, \u2018Then shut it down.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No one spoke.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz wrote the sentence carefully.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose exact words?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs close as I remember.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam reached for his phone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need Halden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWait,\u201d Ruiz said.<\/p>\n<p>He stopped.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause if somebody was told to shut something down, we don\u2019t announce that we know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I felt suddenly cold.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m saying we verify the firm and preserve what we can before contacting anyone through channels your husband may know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz stood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGive me the public number for Halden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam dialed from his own phone on speaker.<\/p>\n<p>A receptionist answered after two rings.<\/p>\n<p>Liam asked for Claire Donnelly.<\/p>\n<p>There was a pause.<\/p>\n<p>Then another voice came on.<\/p>\n<p>A man introduced himself as Martin Bell.<\/p>\n<p>Liam explained that he needed to reach Claire regarding an urgent client matter.<\/p>\n<p>Bell was silent for several seconds.<\/p>\n<p>Then he said something that made Liam look at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>He lifted one finger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCould you repeat that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bell did.<\/p>\n<p>Liam ended the call without saying goodbye.<\/p>\n<p>His face had changed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaya.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClaire Donnelly doesn\u2019t work there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe says she resigned three weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stared at him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou emailed her yesterday?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom what address?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I recited it.<\/p>\n<p>Liam typed it into his phone.<\/p>\n<p>His expression grew worse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaya, Bell says Halden doesn\u2019t use that domain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The room seemed to tilt.<\/p>\n<p>I had exchanged documents through that address.<\/p>\n<p>I had used the portal connected to it.<\/p>\n<p>I had uploaded records.<\/p>\n<p>Photographs.<\/p>\n<p>Financial statements.<\/p>\n<p>Evidence Ethan was never supposed to see.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCall Bell back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liam did.<\/p>\n<p>This time, I listened as he confirmed Halden\u2019s actual website and secure portal address.<\/p>\n<p>One letter differed.<\/p>\n<p>A single letter.<\/p>\n<p>The kind of change designed to disappear inside familiarity.<\/p>\n<p>My hands began shaking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow long?\u201d Ruiz asked.<\/p>\n<p>I knew exactly what she meant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow long have you used the false address?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I thought backward.<\/p>\n<p>Initial consultation.<\/p>\n<p>Engagement letter.<\/p>\n<p>Claire\u2019s first reports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaya.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlmost six months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz\u2019s face hardened.<\/p>\n<p>The audit had not merely been discovered.<\/p>\n<p>Someone may have been inside it from the beginning.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<h2><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/?p=14385\">Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The False Audit Portal Meant Someone Had Been Reading My Escape Plan Long Before Ethan Ever Found the Email<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Detective Ruiz had barely finished asking for the name of the forensic firm when a technician arrived to take me for imaging. The interruption frustrated me more than it should &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14409,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14384\/revisions\/14409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}