Our first major contract topped three hundred thousand dollars.
Preston hugged me, crying.
“Without you I’d be lost. Everything we build will belong to both of us.”
I believed him.
Over the years we bought trucks, opened warehouses, and landed contracts with major retail chains.
Preston appeared in business magazines and began presenting himself as the sole creator of the company.
I preferred to stay behind the financial operations.
It was my worst mistake.
His mother quit working and started flaunting jewelry. His father, Roger, became a so-called business adviser. Francine received a car, and Maxwell, her husband, opened a trucking company that began working with us.
To make some family expenses easier, I authorized five additional cards on my personal account.
I thought I was helping the family I also considered mine.
But soon the contempt began.
“Marianne just checks invoices,” Patricia would say during meetings. “The real talent is my son.”
Preston never corrected her.
When I got pregnant after years of trying, I thought our relationship would improve.
The opposite happened.
He missed my doctor’s appointments, came home at dawn, and began hiding his phone.
Until I discovered hotel receipts, designer handbags, and jewelry he was trying to charge to the company.
Veronica’s name appeared among the receipts.
She was the daughter of a prominent construction magnate.
When I confronted Preston, he called me jealous and dramatic.
A week later I found Veronica sitting in my living room, wearing a coat he had supposedly bought for me.
Patricia was serving her food while ordering me to make them coffee.
“This girl knows how to deal with important people,” she told me in front of everyone.
Preston even demanded that I apologize to his mistress.
That night I shut myself in my office and went through documents I hadn’t looked at in months.
I found unusual payments to Maxwell’s company.
Invoices for truck trips that didn’t appear in our records.
Transfers authorized without delivery confirmations.
And a preliminary shortfall of more than $400,000.
I called Gabrielle immediately.
“We need an independent audit,” I told her. “I think they’re siphoning money.”
Three days later, my attorney showed me the first results.
Maxwell had billed for services that never existed.
Preston had approved the payments.
But there was a third name in the bank records.
Someone who should never have had access to the authorization keys.
When Gabrielle told me who had executed the transfers, I understood why that whole family was in such a hurry to get rid of me.
It was Francine, Preston’s sister.
And worst of all, we had just found a written instruction to pin the responsibility for the missing money on me.
PART 3
“What do you mean, they want to blame me?” I asked Gabrielle.
My attorney turned the computer toward me. There was an email sent from Francine’s corporate account to Lakeshore Freight’s accountant: “If anyone asks about those payments, say Marianne reviewed them. My brother says she approved everything. We need to get the folders ready before she’s gone.”
A chill ran through me. It wasn’t enough for them to push me aside so Preston could marry Veronica. They wanted to leave me holding a fraud, pregnant, while they enjoyed the money.
“Can they fabricate evidence?” I asked.
“They can try,” Gabrielle said. “That’s why we backed up the original records, the bank access logs, and the GPS reports. We won’t accuse anyone without proof, but we also won’t let them alter a single invoice.”
The analysis was damning. Maxwell was billing for trips between Chicago and Indianapolis his trucks had never made. In other cases he charged for parts that had never entered the warehouse. Francine took the invoices straight to accounting and, using an authorization device Preston gave her, released transfers before the managers could verify the goods.
Patricia didn’t appear signing anything, but she had received deposits from Maxwell’s company. Roger also showed up in messages ordering people to “not ask questions because we’re family.”
The next day, Patricia found me eating breakfast in the kitchen of the Lake Forest house. She wore a new necklace and set the box on the table so I’d see it.
“Veronica went with me to pick it out. Preston certainly knows how to spoil his mother. Maybe you’ll learn something before you go.”
I recognized the charge in my banking app: twenty-six thousand dollars, paid from my personal account.
“I paid for that necklace,” I told her.
“Oh, please! My son gave me the card.”
“The card is in your name, but it’s an additional card. The account and the money are mine.”
She laughed with contempt.
“When my son throws you out of this house, you won’t have enough to buy diapers.”
That same afternoon I reviewed the contract Preston flaunted as his great triumph: one million dollars from the construction company owned by Veronica’s father. His family had announced the sum as an investment that would make Lakeshore Freight the most powerful company in the region.
