Chapter 3 - The Company That Sold Nothing"THAT'S YOUR SIGNATURE, SIMONE. BUT THE COMPUTER SAYS YOU WERE IN TWO CITIES AT ONCE."
Nadia's voice was steady, but her eyes were troubled.
I looked at the monitor.
Two different records.
The first placed me at a financial compliance conference in Vancouver.
The second claimed I had electronically approved an invoice from Ottawa at almost exactly the same time.
One of them was false.
And I knew which one.
"I want every Northstar transaction reviewed," I said.
Nadia nodded.
"Already started."
"And nobody outside this room hears about the suspected fraud until Helena advises us how to handle it."
"Understood."
I turned toward the window.
Ottawa was waking beneath a dull gray sky.
Cars moved slowly through the wet streets.
People hurried to work carrying umbrellas and takeaway coffee.
To everyone outside, it was an ordinary Wednesday.
Inside my office, I was beginning to suspect that my former husband had built an entire business arrangement around someone else's money.
Mine.
By midmorning, our IT contractor, Marco Bellini, arrived.
Marco was a quiet man in his early forties who rarely became excited about anything unless a server was malfunctioning.
He examined the account activity, login records, and older authentication settings.
Two hours later, he asked to speak with me privately.
"Simone, did anyone ever use your personal laptop for company email?"
"Occasionally, years ago."
"Did Grant?"
I hesitated.
"Sometimes. When we were married, he borrowed it for travel bookings."
Marco looked uncomfortable.
"Did he know the login password?"
"Yes. I changed it after we separated."
"Good. But changing the password doesn't always invalidate every older session or copied credential. We need to reconstruct what remained accessible."
A memory surfaced.
Fourteen months earlier, shortly before Grant and I separated, we'd moved some administrative services to a new platform.
I'd been overwhelmed with work.
Grant had volunteered to help organize household paperwork, and I'd allowed him to use my laptop.
At the time, his offer had seemed unusually considerate.
Now I wondered whether he'd been helping himself to something else.
"Could he have accessed the accounting approval system?" I asked.
"Possibly. I'm not going to guess until we've examined the evidence."
I respected that answer.
We arranged for an independent digital forensic specialist to review the affected systems, preserve the logs, and help secure the remaining accounts.
Then I turned my attention to Northstar.
A public corporate search revealed that Northstar Operations Inc. had been incorporated less than two years earlier.
Its registered correspondence address immediately caught my attention.
A commercial mailbox in Kanata.
Only a few minutes from the townhouse Grant had received in our divorce settlement.
The company's publicly listed director was Warren Pike.
I felt my hands go cold.
Warren.
The same man standing behind Grant and Olivia in the engagement photograph.
The same man who had asked so many questions about my company's revenue.
The same man Grant had assured me was merely an acquaintance.
I printed the records.
Nadia studied them.
"That's a remarkable coincidence."
"I don't believe in coincidences involving six figures."
Neither did she.
We examined Northstar's website.
It contained polished language about operational efficiency, digital transformation, and financial advisory solutions.
But there were no employees listed.
No verifiable client projects.
No meaningful service descriptions.
The website looked impressive until someone tried to determine what the company actually did.
I recognized the technique immediately.
In forensic accounting, vague descriptions often appeared in transactions designed to seem legitimate without offering anything measurable.
That didn't establish wrongdoing by itself.
But coupled with the invoices, it gave us plenty of reasons to investigate.
We found a contact number.
Nadia called.
The line went directly to a generic voicemail.
She left a neutral message requesting information about prior invoices.
An hour later, the number was disconnected.
I stared at her.
"That was quick."
Nadia's mouth tightened.
"Almost as though somebody was expecting questions."
Just before lunch, Marco returned.
He had discovered that the suspicious transactions were associated with an older administrative session.
Not a normal employee login.
Not a new login created after our separation.
An existing session that had remained active through part of the software transition.
"Someone knew exactly where to look," he explained.
"Can you identify the device?"
"We have a partial record. I want the independent specialist to confirm it before we attribute it to anyone."
I nodded.
Then Marco mentioned something else.
"Several invoices were uploaded through a temporary administrative workspace."
"Who controlled that workspace?"
"Originally, your executive assistant."
I felt my stomach drop.
"Tess?"
Theresa Miller had worked for me for four years.
She was twenty-nine, efficient, quiet, and especially talented at keeping my chaotic schedule organized.
She had helped me through the divorce.
She had brought me coffee on mornings when I looked exhausted.
Once, after a difficult court meeting, she'd waited outside my office simply to ask whether I needed someone to sit with me.
I trusted her.
But trust and evidence were different things.
I asked Nadia to bring Tess into the conference room.
When Tess entered, her expression was cheerful.
"Did you need the calendar revised?"
"No, Tess. Please sit down."
She noticed the papers.
Her smile faded.
I placed one invoice in front of her.
"Do you recognize this vendor?"
She examined it.
"No."
"Look again."
Her fingers tightened around the page.
I watched her face change.
And suddenly, I knew she recognized something.
"Tess?"
She looked up.
"Where did you get this?"
"It's in our payment records."
Her breathing became shallow.
"I thought those were old files."
"What old files?"
She didn't answer.
Nadia leaned forward gently.
"Tess, we're trying to understand how these documents entered the system. Nobody is asking you to speculate."
Tess looked at me.
Then she looked toward the closed conference room door.
"Simone, I need to tell you something."
I waited.
"About a year ago, Grant came to the office."
I felt my chest tighten.
"When?"
"During the software transition. You were in meetings all afternoon."
I remembered the day.
Grant had offered to collect something I'd forgotten at home.
He'd appeared with my laptop bag.
I'd barely looked up when he arrived.
"What happened?" I asked.
Tess swallowed.
"He told me you wanted copies of some administrative files for your accountant."
"Which accountant?"
"He said Warren Pike."
Nadia and I exchanged a glance.
Tess continued.
"He said you were too busy to organize them yourself. He knew details about our accounts, and he had your laptop."
"Did you give him the files?"
"Some of them."
"Which ones?"
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Vendor records. Old authorization forms. A few signed documents."
I stayed very still.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because two weeks later, he came back."
My stomach tightened.
"What did he want?"
"He asked me to delete an email thread."
"What email thread?"
"Messages about the files."
"Did you?"
She nodded miserably.
"He told me you'd be furious if you knew I'd sent them through the wrong account. He said I could lose my job."
I pressed my fingertips against the edge of the table.
I was angry.
But I could also see how easily Grant had exploited someone's fear.
He had spent years doing the same thing to me.
"Tess, do you still have anything?"
She wiped her cheek.
"I saved a copy of one message."
"Where?"
"On my personal phone."
She took it from her pocket.
Her hands were shaking as she opened an old screenshot.
I recognized Grant's phone number.
The message read:
Make sure Simone doesn't see the vendor folder. Warren needs everything ready before the settlement is signed.
Beneath it was a reply from Tess.
I don't feel comfortable hiding this from her.
Then came Grant's answer.
You don't understand what happens to people who interfere with family business.
The room fell silent.
I stared at the screen.
My former husband hadn't merely borrowed my laptop.
He had apparently pressured one of my employees to help him access confidential records.
And he had been preparing something long before our divorce was finalized.
Tess looked at me desperately.
"Simone, I'm so sorry."
I took a slow breath.
"We'll discuss what happened, Tess. But first, we need to preserve that message and every related record."
She nodded.
Then she whispered:
"There's one more thing."
My pulse quickened.
"What?"
"The day Grant came back, he wasn't alone."
"Who was with him?"
Tess hesitated.
Then she said a name I had never expected.
"Evelyn."
Grant's sister.
The woman Patricia had praised for nine years.
May you like
The woman who supposedly understood what made a proper wife.
And according to Tess, Evelyn had stood outside my office while Grant searched through my business records.
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