Five minutes after my divorce was final, my father gripped my arm outside the courthouse and said, “Block every card, right now.” That night my ex tried to spend $300,000 on his mistress’s sapphire necklace with my company’s black card — in a club my firm owned.

“Ex.”

“Your ex-husband has been a signatory on the company’s operating account since 2019. Did you know that?”

“He’s not an owner. He never was. He’s not on the—”

“He’s not an owner. He’s a signatory. You added him in 2019 so he could ‘help with payroll’ when you had pneumonia. Do you remember?”

I did.

Faintly.

I’d been in bed for three weeks with walking pneumonia that turned into real pneumonia, and payroll had been due, and Trevor had said “let me handle it, just add me so the bank lets me,” and I’d called the bank from my bed and added him, and I’d meant to take him off, and I’d never taken him off, because you never do, because nobody reads the form again.

“He’s been a signatory for five years,” my father said. “And for the last fourteen months, he’s been moving money.”

“How much.”

“Not a lot at a time. That’s how I know he’s been doing it a while. A man who takes a lot at once gets caught by the bookkeeper. A man who takes four thousand here, six there, labeled ‘vendor deposit’ and ‘contractor advance’ and ‘site petty cash’—that man gets caught by someone’s father who used to do this for a living.” He turned the legal pad around. “Over fourteen months, four hundred and ten thousand dollars. To an LLC called Collins Design Group.”