Chapter 8 - Nathan's Business Partner
Nathan's company had two other partners — Reggie Foss, who had co-founded the firm with Nathan fifteen years earlier, and a newer minority partner named Yasmin Osei, who had joined three years prior.
Dana arranged, through legal channels, for both partners to be notified of the financial irregularities Felix had uncovered, given their own legitimate ownership stake in a company whose funds had apparently been misdirected.
Reggie called me directly two days later — something Dana had warned might happen, given his long friendship with Nathan, though she'd also noted that a business partner's own financial exposure often outweighed personal loyalty once fraud entered the conversation.
"Vivian," he said, his voice tight with barely controlled anger. "I need you to know, I had no idea about any of this. When Nathan told the partnership Dalton Strategic Consulting was doing communications work, I trusted him. I approved those invoices myself, based on his representations."
"I believe you," I said, and meant it. Reggie had always struck me, across years of company holiday parties and casual dinners, as a genuinely straightforward man, entirely different in temperament from Nathan's smoother, more strategic presentation.
"I've already spoken with our outside counsel," Reggie continued. "We're launching our own internal investigation, separate from your divorce proceedings. If what your forensic accountant found is accurate, Nathan's going to face serious consequences within the company, regardless of how your personal case resolves."
"What kind of consequences?"
"Potentially removal from active management, depending on what the investigation confirms. Possibly a buyout of his ownership stake at a valuation that accounts for the funds he diverted. I won't pretend this is comfortable for me, Vivian — Nathan and I built this company together, and I care about him, even now. But I care more about running an honest business, and about Yasmin's stake being protected, and frankly, about not becoming complicit in something I should have caught earlier myself."
I appreciated Reggie's honesty more than I could easily express. "Thank you for calling me directly," I said. "I know this puts you in a difficult position."
"It puts all of us in a difficult position," Reggie said. "Nathan's the one who created that, not you. I hope you know that."
Over the following month, the company's internal investigation moved forward in parallel with my own divorce proceedings, the two processes occasionally intersecting as Felix's forensic findings proved useful to both. Nathan, according to updates Dana relayed carefully, had initially tried to characterize the entire situation as a misunderstanding, then, as the evidence mounted, shifted toward a more contrite, damage-control posture that struck me, even secondhand, as entirely familiar in its careful construction.
The company ultimately reached a settlement with Nathan — a reduced ownership stake, a formal repayment plan for the misdirected funds, and a transition away from active day-to-day management, though he retained a passive financial interest in recognition of his founding role.
For my own case, Dana used the confirmed financial misconduct to negotiate a considerably more favorable asset division than we might otherwise have achieved — accounting not just for the marital funds diverted to Brooke's consulting company, but for the broader pattern of financial concealment that had, we now understood, been running parallel to the emotional and parental deceptions I'd already documented.
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"This is going to resolve favorably," Dana told me, during one of our regular case updates. "Not perfectly — divorce rarely does — but favorably, given everything we've built."
I thought about the recital lobby, months earlier, Nathan's dismissive don't make this dramatic, and felt something settle firmly into place: the quiet, hard-won understanding that documentation, patience, and refusing to simply accept someone else's version of events had, slowly but genuinely, built me an entirely different outcome than the one Nathan had clearly assumed I'd simply absorb.
