Two Ultrasound Receipts And A Billion-Dollar Divorce Trap

I slammed the silver lid down. The screen vanished into blackness. I threw my arms over the cold aluminum casing, burying my face into the crook of my elbow, and let my body go completely limp.

The brass doorknob clicked.

Light spilled across the floorboards.

"Clara?" Julian’s voice cut through the silence.

I kept my breathing perfectly even. I let out a soft, incoherent mumble and shifted my head against my arms.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded.

I dragged my head up, squinting against the harsh glare of the hallway light. "Julian?"

He stepped into the room. "You're at my desk."

"I was looking for a pen." I sat up, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. "I had an idea for the nursery. I didn't want to lose it."

Julian walked around the edge of the mahogany desk. He stopped right beside my chair. His gaze dropped to the closed laptop hidden beneath my forearms.

"A pen," he repeated.

"Yes." I forced a sleepy chuckle, a light sound that felt entirely out of place in the dark room. "Pregnancy insomnia. I thought if I wrote down the crib dimensions, my brain would finally shut off."

He reached out. His fingers brushed my wrist, resting right over my racing pulse. He gently but firmly moved my arm aside.

"Did you open it?"

"Your computer? No. I don't know the new password, remember?"

Julian placed his palm flat against the metal casing of the laptop.

"It's warm," he noted.

"I moved it to check the drawer underneath."

He stared down at me. Shadows played across his sharp cheekbones. I blinked back at him lazily, fighting the urge to shrink away from his touch.

"I thought I heard voices," he pressed.

"I was reading an article out loud," I lied smoothly. "About twin sleep training schedules. It helps me memorize things."

"Come back to bed," he murmured. "I’ll buy you a dozen notebooks tomorrow."

"Okay." I let him pull me to my feet.

"Don't wander the house at night," he added. "You might trip. It's not safe."

***

The next afternoon, the smell of stale grease and bleach replaced the sandalwood in my memory.

I pushed open the glass door of Rusty's Diner on the edge of the suburbs. The bell overhead jingled weakly. I kept my oversized sunglasses firmly on my face, ignoring the dim lighting of the restaurant.

Victor sat in a cracked vinyl booth at the very back.

I slid into the seat opposite him. The table wobbled under my weight.

"You're late," Victor grumbled. He didn't look up from his black coffee.

"Traffic on the interstate." I pulled the thick manila envelope from my leather tote. I slid it across the sticky Formica surface.

Victor eyed the package. "On the phone last night you said you’d found something ugly."

"Three million dollars worth of ugly."

He grabbed the envelope and ripped the flap open. He pulled out the stack of printed spreadsheets. His eyes scanned the first page.

"He's moving it fast," Victor noted.

"Through a shell company in the Caymans. Shell Holdings LLC."

Victor flipped to the second page. Then the third. "This is sloppy for Julian. He left the origin routing numbers intact."

"He thinks I'm too busy glowing with maternal joy to notice missing funds."

The waitress appeared out of nowhere. She dropped a ceramic mug in front of me. Dark liquid sloshed over the rim, leaving a brown puddle on the table. She walked away without offering a menu.

I stared at the water ring forming around the base of the cup. I raised my hands, interlocking my fingers, and pressed them hard under my chin. The pressure forced the veins on the back of my hands to bulge against my pale skin.

"Can you freeze the destination accounts?" I asked.

"Me? No. I run a private security firm, Clara, not the federal government."

"You have contacts. People who owe you favors from your old precinct."

Victor tapped a thick finger against the paper. "If I call in those favors, Julian will know someone is digging. He’ll burn the accounts and move the cash to untraceable crypto by midnight."

"He's already draining our joint trust. I need to stop him before it's empty."

"You need a divorce lawyer."

"A lawyer takes months to subpoena offshore records. I need leverage today."

Victor sighed, folding the papers back into the envelope. "You always were my most stubborn investigator."

"That's why you hired me."

"That's why I fired you."

I let out a sharp, genuine laugh. "You didn't fire me, Victor. I quit to marry him."

"Same difference. You made a bad call."

"Help me fix it."

"Why the sudden rush?" Victor asked. "Julian has been a bastard for years. Why go nuclear now?"

"He bought his mistress a black card yesterday."

Victor raised an eyebrow.

"And she's pregnant," I added. "He was kissing her stomach in a hospital room while I was getting my own ultrasound."

Victor’s expression hardened. "Jesus, Clara."

"I'm having twins, Victor. I refuse to let him steal their future to fund his second family."

"Did you take evasive routes getting here?"

"I took three different exits and doubled back through a residential neighborhood. No one was behind me."

"You're out of practice." He picked up his coffee mug. He didn't drink. His eyes shifted, darting past my shoulder toward the front entrance of the diner.

The muscles in his thick neck went rigid.

"What is it?" I asked, dropping my hands from my chin.

Victor slid the manila envelope back across the table. His knuckles brushed my coffee cup, pushing it slightly to the left.

"Put this away," he ordered.

"Why?"

He leaned forward, closing the distance between us. "You're being followed."

My stomach dropped. I started to turn my head.

"Don't look," Victor snapped.

I froze, staring straight ahead at his weathered face.

"Three o'clock," he muttered, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. "The guy in the gray jacket is recording you."