A forensic map of shell companies.
I had learned the one lesson Weston had accidentally taught me: that a story is only as strong as what survives when the storyteller leaves the room.
And this time, I made sure everything survived.
The young prosecutor who took my file was quiet for a long moment after she’d read it.
Then she looked up and said, “You’ve done our work for us.” It was the first time in two years that a professional had looked at my life and seen competence instead of collapse, and I had to look out the window for a second so she wouldn’t see what it did to me.
The forged medical records were a crime.
The forged financial transfers were a crime.
Together they were a pattern, and patterns are what prosecutors love.
I brought everything — the two versions of the file, the auditor’s trace, Xavier’s expert reading — to the district attorney’s office, and then I did the hardest thing of all, which was wait.
The break came from the clinic administrator.