Chapter 3 - THE SECOND ACCOUNT
The next morning, I told Abigail I needed to visit my former office.
She didn't ask why.
That worried me.
She simply smiled.
“Take your time.”
I drove to a coffee shop instead.
From there, I accessed records I had legally retained from my previous investigative work.
I searched every company connected to the $80,000 transfer.
The company was called Northbridge Asset Management.
It had been registered eighteen months earlier.
Its listed director was a man named Daniel Voss.
The name meant nothing to me.
Until I searched the address.
It was a small office in a building owned by my wife's brother.
Ethan.
Abigail had always told me Ethan was a struggling businessman.
But Northbridge had received more than $400,000 from elderly clients.
Several of those clients had connections to Abigail.
I began looking at the timeline.
Six months before I deployed, Abigail had started handling Mom's finances.
Three months later, Mom had stopped leaving the house.
Then the bruises began.
Then the psychiatric evaluation.
Then the transfer request.
Everything was connected.
But I still didn't know what the second account was.
That evening, I searched my father's old records.
My father had been a financial adviser.
After his death, Mom had handled everything.
According to the official records, all his accounts had been closed.
But there was a gap.
A six-month period during which money had disappeared from one investment company.
I found a reference to an offshore trust.
The trust had been created before my father's death.
The beneficiary was not my mother.
It was me.
I stared at the screen.
Then I called Mom.
She answered on the second ring.
“Samuel?”
“Did Dad leave me a trust?”
Silence.
Then:
“How did you find out?”
“So there is one.”
Mom exhaled.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“Mom.”
“Approximately $2.4 million.”
I closed my eyes.
The $80,000 was not the real target.
The house was not the real target.
The second account was worth millions.
“Who knows about it?”
“Your father.”
“He's dead.”
“Your father, me, and one other person.”
“Who?”
Mom hesitated.
“Abigail.”
I felt as though the room had tilted.
“My wife?”
“She found the documents.”
“When?”
“After you left for deployment.”
I gripped the phone.
“What did she do?”
“She asked me to give her access.”
“And you refused.”
“Yes.”
“That was when she locked you in the room?”
Mom didn't answer.
I knew.
That night, I returned home.
Abigail was waiting in the living room.
She wore a soft gray sweater.
Her expression was gentle.
“You look tired.”
“Long day.”
She walked toward me.
“Did you find anything?”
I stopped.
“About what?”
She smiled.
“Your mother.”
I smiled back.
“Nothing important.”
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then she kissed me.
Her lips were cold.
At midnight, I checked the recorder beneath the kitchen table.
The audio was clear.
Abigail had spoken to Ethan.
“You said the account was accessible.”
Ethan answered:
“It should be.”
“Then why hasn't the money moved?”
“Because the mother refuses to cooperate.”
“She won't have a choice after the evaluation.”
A pause.
“What about Samuel?”
Abigail laughed.
“Nobody is ever going to believe that old woman.”
My hands curled into fists.
Then Ethan asked:
“And if he does?”
Abigail's voice became colder.
“Then we use the same story.”
“What story?”
“That he's unstable after deployment.”
I stopped the recording.
For a moment, I couldn't breathe.
My wife had planned to make me look mentally unstable.
The same way she had tried to make Mom look mentally incompetent.
I saved the audio in three separate locations.
Then I checked the security system.
The footage from the night Mom had been injured had been deleted.
But I found something.
A motion sensor had activated at 2:43 a.m.
The camera had been disabled.
The access log showed Abigail's code.
But the motion sensor registered two people.
One was Abigail.
The second person was unknown.
I enlarged the image from a neighboring camera.
A man stood near the side gate.
His face was hidden.
But his jacket had a distinctive silver emblem.
I had seen that emblem before.
On the wrist of the man who had visited my mother.
I called an old contact.
“Can you identify this?”
He studied the image.
Then called me back.
The emblem belonged to a private security company.
The company was owned by Daniel Voss.
Northbridge Asset Management.
I stared at the screen.
The man connected to the money was the man who had been inside my house.
And suddenly, the second account became the least frightening part of the story.
May you like
Because whoever wanted that money…
Was already inside my home.
