Page 99 of Earned Husband

He nodded. “I’m afraid so. Her attorney will argue that any and every financial loss we can actually prove was not brought about by the affair, but by your father’s criminal conduct and the very public trial that followed.”

Jane raked her fingers through her loose hair, looking utterly defeated as she stared back at him. “We’re dead in the water, aren’t we? Mallory is going free and Dad is going to be stuck behind bars for the remainder of his sentence. Legally, there’s nothing we can do to clear the family’s name.”

“Correct,” he said gently. “I’m sorry, Jane, but right now, that is realistically what we’re looking at.”

“Not to mention the fact that if we do sue her, we’ll be fueling the media fire all over again,” I said. “We’d be dragging all this sordid history right back into the spotlight for no real reason. It wouldn’t change anything.”

“Yes,” he said. Then he talked for another twenty minutes about things I didn’t bother listening to.

Frankly, the fact that he was still trying to encourage us to have hope after that meeting was sickening. Obviously, we knew that things would change if new evidence came up. We also knew nothing would change if the Feds didn’t unearth anything else.

Finally, the legal team started gathering up their laptops and writing pads, the rest of the executives from our board joining them when they left. Neither Jane or I moved a muscle, though.

When the last attorneys and board members were finally gone, the heavy doors shut behind them and Jane sagged in her chair. “So that’s that.”

“Yeah.”

She hung her head, both palms bracing against the table as she inhaled, exhaled, and then groaned. “I kept thinking we were finally getting somewhere.”

“So did I.”

“But it’s always just another dead end.”

I stared at the folders stacked neatly in front of me, years of paperwork containing the result of dozens of investigations. “There has to be something we’re missing in there.”

Jane sighed but then reached for one of the files and opened it. She extracted a few pages and slid them over to me, revealing a summary of the offshore account.

I glanced up at her. “They still haven’t traced who it belongs to?”

“Nope. There’s hundreds of millions ofour moneylying in that account, and we know it’s ours, but we can’t touch it because it’s in someone else’s name. Someone who, according to our own investigators, doesn’t exist.”

I frowned. “They haven’t found anything?”

She shook her head. “No social security number, no birth certificate, or tax history, or employment, or even a fucking passport.Someoneopened this account. I mean, it sure as hell didn’t open itself, but there’s no trace of them.”

“The Feds haven’t found anything either?” I asked. “Are we sure? I mean, they found the account. They’ve got to have something on who it belongs to.”

A short, humorless laugh burst out of her. “Oh, they think they’ve got something, alright.”

My heart almost skipped a beat, but the fact that this was only coming up now meant that what they’d found wasn’t good. “What do they have?”

“They looked into it while you were in Egypt,” she said. “They tried to tell me that the money was funneledafterDad’s conviction. They implied that I was in on it, Colin. They threatened me with tax evasion if we didn’t cooperate.”

For a brief second, I thought I’d fainted. My vision blacked out and my palms were suddenly clammy. “What?”

“Yeah. Alex is helping to unravel it all,” she said. “If the money moved to that account before Dad’s conviction, that’s one thing, but if it moved after…”

“Then Mallory was still operating,” I said in a hushed whisper. “Oh my God.”

Jane’s eyes slid to mine. “Mallory or someone else, Colin.Someonewas still operating, but she fled the country, remember? She wouldn’t have had access to those accounts anymore to be able to move the money after hisconvictionwhen she went missing straight after hisarrest.”

“Are we sure about that?” I swiped my tongue across my lips, but my mouth was still so dry that it felt like I was back in the Egyptian desert. “When did we change the passwords?”

“Immediately,” she said without hesitation. “The very same day. There’s no way it could’ve been her if the money only moved when they say it did.”

My chin came up when I thought it over. “Okay, well, I’m here now. This is why I came home. To help.”

“No,” she said firmly, sitting up straighter as she turned to give me a stern look. “You need to be in Egypt with Deja. At least until the wedding. That’s where you’re supposed to be right now, and that’s where you’re going.”