"He showed me pieces. Enough to delay the questions. Not enough to answer them. I told myself I needed to stay in the job so I could keep employees paid and fix what I could. Every week I waited, the hole got bigger."
He looked down at his hands. I could see that he wanted forgiveness, or at least recognition that his failure had been complicated. He did not ask for it, and I did not offer it. "You should have told someone," I said.
"I know."
"Not just me. The people who worked for him. The investors. Whoever had the power to stop it before my name ended up on a loan guarantee."
"I know that too."
For several seconds we listened to the vending machine. Then Daniel reached into his briefcase and took out a neatly organized folder. It was the kind of file he used to bring to Ryan's home office, separated by tabs, each page placed so the dates could be followed without guesswork. The professionalism of it almost made me angry. He had always known how to organize a problem. He had just taken too long to decide this one needed to be faced.
"The bank's commercial fraud team contacted our outside counsel yesterday," he said. "They couldn't confirm the notary details on the guaranty. The notary commission listed on one version of the packet had expired months earlier. Then the lender asked for documents proving you understood the land was being pledged, and Ryan produced an authorization letter on our company letterhead. I had never seen it."
"He wrote a letter saying I agreed?"
"It appears to have been prepared in your name. The bank asked for a direct confirmation, and Ryan told them you were traveling and unavailable. That's when I recognized your signature from a tax document in the file, and I knew the handwriting was wrong."
I thought about the old tax forms Ryan had asked me to sign during our first year of marriage. He had been cheerful that evening, grateful I was helping with a confusing business requirement. I had trusted him because that was what marriage had meant to me then. Now a signature from our early life together appeared to have become a tool used against me after we had stopped understanding one another at all.
"How much money is missing?" I asked.
"We don't know the final amount yet. The independent review has identified about six hundred forty thousand dollars in unsupported transfers and project charges that don't reconcile with actual work. Some may be recoverable business expenses; some may not. There's also a proposed three-point-two-million-dollar facility that was supposed to close this afternoon."
"And the money from that would have gone where?"
"Into a holding company named Mar Azul Holdings. Ryan presented it as a project vehicle for a hotel renovation in Mexico. But the project documents don't match the invoices, and the beneficial ownership records raise questions."