Chapter 3 - The Audit Trail
For the next three days, while recovering in the VIP maternity suite my father had quietly upgraded me to with a single phone call, I worked late into the night.
Rowan didn't visit on Sunday. He texted on Sunday evening saying he had to help Selina unpack her gifts and recover from her “exhausting weekend.”
I didn't reply. I was too busy analyzing the corporate credit card statements and internal expense reports of Apex Logistics—the mid-sized shipping firm where Rowan served as vice president of operations.
What I found made my blood run cold.
For the past eighteen months, Rowan had been systematically siphoning company funds through a network of shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands. The beneficiary of those offshore accounts wasn't an anonymous investor; it was a boutique real estate firm in Miami co-owned by none other than Selina Vance and her longtime companion.
He hadn't just been cheating on me emotionally with his mother; he had been committing federal wire fraud and corporate embezzlement, using Apex Logistics as his personal piggy bank to fund Selina’s lavish lifestyle and his own speculative property investments.
Even worse, Rowan was listed as the sole managing director of those shell companies, meaning when the inevitable internal audit hit, he would take the fall for the entire multi-million-dollar fraud scheme. Selina had cleverly insulated herself while pushing her only son right into the path of a financial guillotine.
On Monday morning, just as I finished compiling the final PDF dossier and encrypting the backup files, the heavy oak door of my hospital room swung open.
Rowan walked in.
He didn't carry flowers. He didn't carry a balloon. He carried a look of intense, irritated martyrdom, as if he were the one who had been deeply wronged.
“Phoebe,” Rowan sighed loudly, tossing his leather briefcase onto the visitor’s sofa. “We really need to talk about how ridiculously dramatic you’ve been acting all weekend. Mom was beside herself with worry that you were ruining her birthday with your bad timing.”
He stopped mid-sentence.
He finally looked up from his shoes and noticed the tall, silver-haired man standing by the window, holding a baby blanket wrapped snugly around a tiny newborn.
Rowan blinked, his eyes darting between my father and me. The irritated expression on his face instantly faltered, replaced by a deep, unsettling confusion.
Then Dad slowly turned around.
He lowered Leo gently into my bassinet, straightened the cuffs of his old gray coat, and walked toward the center of the room with slow, deliberate strides.
As Rowan caught a clear, unobstructed look at my father’s face—the chiseled jawline, the piercing blue eyes, the unmistakable presence of absolute, unyielding power—every trace of color drained from Rowan’s face. He looked as though he had just seen a ghost walk out of a graveyard.
His mouth opened, but no words came out. He staggered backward until his spine hit the closed hospital door.
“M-Mr. Sterling?” Rowan whispered, his voice trembling so violently it was barely audible.
My father looked down at my husband with eyes as cold and unforgiving as winter ice.
May you like
“You must be Rowan,” Dad said smoothly.
And from the absolute terror frozen onto Rowan’s face, he finally understood that missing his son’s birth was only the very first mistake he was about to answer for.
