Chapter 6 - THE BLACK CASE
The black case contained three encrypted drives and two small accounting notebooks.
Nothing looked dramatic.
No stacks of cash.
No forged passport.
No secret second family.
Just numbers.
Dates.
Initials.
Company names.
The kind of evidence that would bore almost everyone until someone qualified explained what it meant.
Eric was qualified.
It took him eleven days.
David’s company had been moving money through a network of subcontractors.
Some were legitimate.
Two were not.
One company receiving large consulting payments was controlled by an old college friend of David’s.
The other traced back to a limited liability company managed by Evelyn.
My mother-in-law.
Money flowed out of David’s business.
Through service agreements.
Into companies that appeared unrelated.
Then some of it came back as personal expenses paid for David and Evelyn.
The notebooks were David’s private reconciliation records.
He had apparently kept them because even people hiding money need to remember where they hid it.
The encrypted drives contained backup accounting exports and emails.
Eric explained it carefully.
“This does not mean every transaction was illegal.”
“So what does it mean?”
“It means David’s divorce disclosures are materially incomplete.”
“How incomplete?”
“Very.”
Natalie leaned forward.
“And the guarantee bearing Hannah’s name?”
Eric nodded.
“We found reference to it.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did he forge it?”
“We need handwriting review and lender records before saying that.”
But the email chain was damaging enough.
One message from David to his controller read:
H won’t approve more exposure. Use the existing file and keep this off home statements.
H.
Me.
Another email from Evelyn:
If she sees the debt before the house issue is settled, she’ll freeze everything.
House issue.
That was the phrase that changed the entire divorce.
Our home had been purchased partly with money from the sale of property my father left me and partly through marital income.
The ownership questions were complicated but manageable.
David had been trying to leverage his interest in the property to support business obligations.
I had refused.
He did it anyway through structures Eric was still tracing.
The black case did not magically decide who owned the house.
What it proved was that David had hidden significant financial information while asking the court to divide property based on incomplete disclosures.
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That was why he wanted the case removed before forensic discovery reached it.
And why Evelyn was willing to meet a stranger in a mall with cash and my house key.
