For the previous four months, I had been quietly reviewing our finances.
I am a forensic accountant.
Not the television version who points at one suspicious number and announces a crime.
Most of my work is boring.
Invoices.
Vendor structures.
Bank reconciliations.
Ownership records.
The trail people leave when they assume small inconsistencies are too boring for anyone to follow.
Numbers had always made sense to me.
Adrian’s explanations had stopped making sense months earlier.
Our household income was good.
Very good.
Yet our emergency savings kept shrinking.
Adrian blamed the nursery.
Medical bills.
Inflation.
House repairs.
But I paid most pregnancy-related expenses through my own insurance.
The nursery did not cost thirty thousand dollars.
And our roof had not suddenly developed a taste for luxury watches.
So I started looking.
Nothing illegal appeared immediately.
That was why I kept digging.
Small outgoing transfers from our joint account were coded as reimbursements.
Some went to Adrian’s personal card.
Others disappeared into an entity named Juniper & Gold Hospitality LLC.
I had never heard of it.
