Chapter 6 - The Woman They Tried to Blame
The shell company's name was Prescott Strategic Outreach LLC.
It had been registered eighteen months earlier under a name similar to the one I had used before my marriage.
The filing listed an address I recognized immediately.
It belonged to a mailbox service three streets from our old apartment.
I had never visited that service and had never authorized a company to be created in my name.
"How could nobody see this?" I asked Rachel.
"A public registration isn't proof of who controls a business," she said.
"We'll have to trace its documents and bank access."
My father was angry enough to call every department head at Pacific Harbor.
I asked him not to.
The people who could help us needed to know evidence would be handled fairly.
I had seen investigations collapse because someone with authority wanted a quick confession more than a reliable answer.
Evelyn agreed to refer the disputed transactions to independent outside counsel and forensic specialists.
The board's audit committee took responsibility for oversight.
Garrett would have an opportunity to respond through the proper process.
My own role was clear.
I was not going to be the company's judge simply because I was its founder's daughter.
I was a mother and a potential victim whose name appeared on records I had never approved.
That afternoon I called my former colleague, Priya Shah, who had supervised vendor onboarding when I worked in purchasing.
We had once shared lunches in a warehouse break room and argued about whether handwritten notes belonged in a modern accounting system.
Priya laughed nervously when she heard my voice.
"Brooke, I thought you'd forgotten us."
"I thought people had forgotten me," I admitted.
She grew quiet when I mentioned the shell company.
"I need you to tell investigators anything you remember," I said.
"Not me, if you'd rather not."
Priya said she had noticed irregular vendor requests two years earlier but believed they were being handled by senior management.
When she raised concerns about incomplete documentation, Garrett called her into his office.
He told her the transactions were part of a confidential expansion initiative supported by the Prescott family.
"He used your name," Priya said.
"He told me you were consulting on it privately."
I felt cold.
"I wasn't."
"I suspected that later."
She explained that she sent a follow-up email asking for written confirmation.
Her next performance review was unexpectedly poor.
She had stopped pressing the issue because her father needed help with dialysis expenses and she could not risk her job.
I knew that fear.
It was the same fear Garrett had used when he reminded me that he controlled our mortgage payments.
"You did what you could," I told her.
"Please speak to the outside investigators."
She agreed after I assured her I wasn't asking her to violate policy or send confidential files to me.
When we ended the call, Nora began crying, followed quickly by Eli.
I tried to lift both bassinets closer and discovered that fatigue had become its own physical weight.
Maya entered before I could ask for help.
She showed me how to settle one baby while comforting the other.
It was mundane and tender, and I nearly cried from relief.
My father arrived carrying a bag of clothes and the wrong size diapers.
He looked embarrassed when Maya corrected him.
"I bought three kinds," he explained.
"I figured one had to be right."
For the first time in days, we laughed together.
Then he sat beside me and confessed that he had suspected Garrett's ambition for years.
"Why didn't you say something clearer?" I asked.
One of the hardest parts of the inquiry was refusing to make every person in Garrett's orbit an enemy.
Priya had followed an executive instruction because she feared losing her job.
Martin had restored a credential after receiving an apparently authorized request.
Kendra had signed paperwork she could not substantiate while also helping Garrett deceive me.
Their actions were not identical, and I did not want anger to flatten those differences.
I imagined what it would mean if an investigation automatically assumed that everyone who touched a document shared the same intent.
That would create another injustice even as we tried to correct the first.
Rachel reminded me that truthful witnesses could describe their own decisions without being asked to guess what others knew.
I followed her advice when Priya called back with one more detail.
She remembered a meeting where Garrett told the team that my father had personally guaranteed the Beacon campaign.
Walter had not.
Priya asked if she should send the old meeting invitation to me.
I told her to provide it to the independent reviewers instead.
"I don't want you blamed for sharing company materials outside the proper process," I said.
She thanked me, sounding relieved.
Later, my father and I discussed how hard it can be for employees to challenge authority even when policies invite them to speak up.
He admitted that some managers rewarded agreement and treated dissent as disloyalty.
"We taught people to trust the title," he said.
"Then we were surprised when they did."
That evening I sat beside the nursery window in the apartment I hoped to move into after discharge.
The street below was ordinary and loud.
A delivery bicycle rattled over a pothole.
A woman hurried home with groceries.
I realized how many people were fighting quiet battles that never reached a boardroom.
The work ahead of me would matter only if it made ordinary lives safer, not merely if Garrett lost his job.
"I did, but then I made it about his character instead of facts you could see."
Walter rubbed his hands.
"You heard me criticizing your husband when what I needed was to listen to what you were experiencing."
It was the apology I had wanted and never known how to request.
I told him I had been lonely, and that defending Garrett had become the easiest way to avoid admitting how bad the marriage felt.
He listened without trying to solve my feelings.
In the early evening Rachel called with news of a letter Garrett's attorney had sent.
He claimed the Beacon payments were authorized and that I had been involved in the transactions before leaving the company.
He also claimed the check was a voluntary settlement proposal made in good faith.
Rachel said the allegations were unsupported and would be tested against the evidence.
Then she read one line that changed my breathing.
Garrett's letter described my hospital account as unreliable because of medication and emotional distress during delivery.
May you like
Even on the day our children were born, he was using my vulnerability as a way to erase my voice.
I looked at the dated images, nurse's notes, and sealed envelope and said, "Then we'll use the records."
