Chapter 3 - THE CORNERED ANIMAL
The news from Victoria lit a fresh fire inside me. For years, Andrew had made me feel small, constantly implying that I was bad with money, that I didn't understand the complex realities of running a business, and that I was dependent on his financial genius. To discover that his "genius" was nothing more than crude, illegal paper tricks felt like peeling back a velvet curtain to reveal a rusty, broken machine.
Over the next two weeks, while I settled Mason and Sophie into a temporary routine in Boston, the financial investigation deepened.
Victoria worked with a forensic accountant named Marcus Thorne, a quiet man with a terrifying eye for detail. Marcus spent fourteen hours a day pulling tax filings, corporate registries, and vendor invoices. What he uncovered was far worse than simple asset-hiding.
Andrew had been taking cash deposits from high-end residential clients in Columbus for prospective kitchen remodels, depositing them into his mother’s shell company, and using those funds to pay off his personal credit cards, buy expensive clothing, pay for Paige’s private medical visits, and lease his luxury Audi. He was running his business like a miniature Ponzi scheme—using new client deposits to finish old jobs, all while declaring poverty to the divorce court.
While Marcus built our financial fortress, Andrew’s personal life was spiraling out of control.
Deprived of my home and bleeding cash, Andrew and his mother had been forced to move into a cramped, two-bedroom rented townhouse on the outskirts of the city.
Without the grand stage of my historical home to impress clients and friends, Andrew’s polished persona began to disintegrate rapidly. The social media posts that Derek Sloan had uploaded had triggered a domino effect. Several of Andrew’s current construction clients, alarmed by the public accusations of fraud and unstable behavior, began demanding full accounting reviews of their advance deposits.
One Tuesday morning, while I was walking back from dropping Mason off at a local Boston preschool, my phone rang from an unknown Columbus number.
Normally, I would have ignored it, but something made me answer.
"Rebecca."
Andrew’s voice sounded hollow, stripped of its usual booming confidence. There was a faint rasp in his throat, and I could hear the harsh sound of heavy wind in the background.
"Andrew," I said coolly, keeping my pace steady along the brick sidewalk. "You know you are supposed to communicate exclusively through our legal counsels."
"I don't give a damn about the lawyers right now, Rebecca!" he snapped, though the edge in his voice lacked its former force; it sounded desperate, frayed. "You're destroying me! Is that what you wanted? Are you happy now?"
"I am living my life, Andrew. You are destroying yourself."
"Do you know what you've done?" he hissed, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "The state licensing board sent an auditor to my office this morning! Two of my biggest residential clients just canceled their contracts and demanded their $40,000 deposits back! I don't have $80,000 liquid, Rebecca! If they file a formal complaint with the prosecutor, I could lose my contractor's license!"
"Then you should have thought about that before you transferred $220,000 of your company revenue into Cynthia’s offshore shell account," I said smoothly.
There was a dead, suffocating silence on the other end of the line.
For five seconds, Andrew didn't breathe. When he finally spoke, his voice was trembling with a mix of fury and terror. "How... how do you know about that?"
"I didn't," I replied honestly. "My forensic accountant did. You spent years calling me stupid, Andrew. You spent years telling me I couldn't survive without you. But you forgot one simple detail: I was the one who kept our family budget afloat while you bought $2,000 coats and pretended to be a tycoon."
"Rebecca, please," he stammered, the pride suddenly melting out of him, replaced by a grotesque, pathetic groveling. "We have children together! Mason and Sophie! If I go to prison, if my business collapses, what happens to their future? What happens to child support? Think about the kids!"
I stopped walking under the shade of a bare oak tree. The sheer hypocrisy of his words made a cold laughter bubble up in my chest.
"You didn't think about Mason and Sophie when you claimed you couldn't afford Sophie’s preschool while buying Paige a diamond bracelet," I said, my voice dropping to an icy register that surprised even me. "You didn't think about them when you brought your mistress into their home and made their mother cook her meals. You didn't care about their future until your own freedom was threatened."
"Rebecca—"
"Do not call this number again, Andrew. The next time you see my face, it will be across a courtroom table, where you will explain to a judge why you swore under oath that you were bankrupt."
I hung up the phone and immediately blocked the number.
That evening, Victoria called with another update.
"Andrew’s attorney just tried to reach out for a private settlement," she informed me. "They are offering to drop all claims on your property, sign over full legal and physical custody of Mason and Sophie with zero visitation demands, if you agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding his business accounts and refrain from handing Marcus Thorne's forensic report to the IRS and the county prosecutor."
I leaned back in my chair, looking at the drawing Mason had made earlier that day—a picture of a big, bright house with a yellow sun over it.
"He wants to trade his children for his financial protection," I said quietly.
"That is essentially what he is offering," Victoria confirmed. "He is terrified of criminal prosecution."
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"Tell his lawyer no," I said without a single second of hesitation. "We make no deals. He signs full custody over to me because he is an unfit, abusive father—not as a trade to cover up his crimes. Send the forensic report to the court, the IRS, and the county prosecutor tomorrow morning."
"I was hoping you'd say that," Victoria smiled. "Let's finish this."
