So I did what I would do for any client.

I began to pull the public IRS filings, and I began to cross-reference them against the merchant accounts linked to my card, and I began, slowly, to see the shape of something I had not expected to find inside my own marriage.

Chapter 8 — The Fall Guy

What I found, when I had followed the numbers all the way down, was that the Vance family’s celebrated charity was not a charity at all.

It was a laundering machine, sophisticated and patient and enormous, and it had been running for years.