Chapter 3 - The Sixty-Thousand Dollar Receipt
Rowan dropped the birth certificate as if it had burned his skin.
“You can’t do this!” he screamed, his polished facade cracking completely. “I am his biological father! You can’t just erase me from my son’s life because of one mistake! I have rights!”
“You have obligations you failed to meet,” Gideon said, stepping between Rowan and the bassinet. The sheer physical presence of my father made Rowan instantly recoil. “And as for rights, Rowan... you might want to consider your legal liabilities before you speak of rights.”
Selina rushed over to Rowan’s side, grabbing his arm. “Rowan, don’t let them bully you! You’re an executive at an asset management firm! We have lawyers! You have paternal rights! They think just because they have money they can intimidate us?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. The absurdity was almost poetic.
“Selina,” I said, opening my laptop on the dining room table, “let’s talk about that asset management firm. And let’s talk about that sixty-thousand-dollar watch on your wrist.”
Rowan’s head snapped toward me. “Phoebe, what are you doing? Leave my work out of this.”
“You see, Rowan, while you were drinking vintage Cabernet at the vineyard this weekend, telling me not to start a fight, I was awake in a hospital room feeding our son. And between feedings, I got curious.”
I turned the laptop screen toward them. On the display was an intricate spreadsheet with red highlight markers across hundreds of line items, accompanied by scanned wire transfers and internal ledger sheets.
“You always told me that your firm was struggling, Rowan,” I said, my voice steady and lethal. “You told me we had to live on a strict budget. You complained when I bought organic groceries. You refused to pay for a private doula because you said we needed to save every penny for the baby’s college fund.”
Rowan swallowed hard. “The market has been volatile—”
“The market has been fine,” I interrupted. “You, however, have been operating a secondary slush fund through Miller Capital Consulting—an unregistered shell entity registered under your mother’s maiden name.”
Selina gasped. “That’s private family business!”
“It’s corporate embezzlement, Selina,” I corrected her sharply. “Specifically, Rowan has been diverting client advisory fee overages—clients who happen to be subsidiaries of Sterling Enterprises—into this private LLC. Over the last eighteen months, he siphoned four hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars.”
Rowan lunged forward, trying to grab the laptop, but Gideon caught him by the lapels of his designer jacket with one hand, shoving him back with effortless power. Rowan stumbled, knocking over a hallway coat rack.
“Touch my daughter’s computer, and you’ll leave this house in an ambulance,” Gideon warned quietly.
Rowan was panting, his hair disheveled, the terror in his eyes absolute. “Phoebe... please. You don’t understand the financial pressures I was under. I did it for us! I wanted to buy us a bigger house! I wanted to give you and the baby the life you deserved!”
“You bought your mother a sixty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe watch with money stolen from a Sterling Capital logistics subsidiary,” I said, turning the screen further to show the exact transaction receipt, time-stamped on Friday afternoon at 3:14 p.m.—one hour before my water broke. “While I was counting contractions alone in our kitchen, you were signing a fraudulent invoice to buy jewelry for a woman who despised me.”
“Phoebe, darling, please,” Selina’s voice turned honeyed and desperate. She reached for my hands, but I stepped back, looking at her with pure revulsion. “We are family. Families make mistakes. Rowan loves you. I have always loved you like a daughter!”
“You told him women have been giving birth in fields for thousands of years,” I reminded her. “You laughed when he told me to call a cab.”
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“I was joking!” Selina wailed. “It was an old wives’ joke! I’m an old woman, Phoebe, forgive an old woman’s foolish words!”
“I am an accountant, Selina,” I replied, closing the laptop with a definitive snap. “I don’t deal in forgiveness. I deal in balance sheets. And right now, your debts are coming due.”
