The Wire Transfer

He didn't sleep that night.

The transfer was real — he'd confirmed it by morning, sitting in his father's old study with the family accountant on speakerphone at six a.m., asking questions in a voice he barely recognized as his own. Two hundred thousand dollars, wired to an account under Claire's maiden name eleven days after she vanished. Not hush money for an affair, the accountant said carefully. It read more like severance.

Like a business transaction.

He drove to Claire's apartment before he'd decided what he was going to say.

"There was a wire transfer," he told her, standing in her kitchen with Victor's folder still under his arm. "Two hundred thousand dollars, eleven days after you left. My mother's signature. Did you know about this?"

Claire's face went carefully blank in a way he was starting to recognize — the same blankness from the park bench, the same blankness from the night Eleanor apologized. "No account was ever opened in my name that I touched, Daniel. I left with four hundred dollars and a bag of maternity clothes."

"Then where did it go?"

Neither of them had an answer yet. What they had instead was Victor Ashford, holding proof of a payment neither of them made, dangling a merger vote over Daniel's head like it was the only leverage in the room — and getting that wrong, Daniel realized slowly, meant Victor didn't actually know where the money went either.

He'd just assumed Daniel would rather protect the story than question it.

Claire's phone rang before he could say any of that out loud. She glanced at the screen, and whatever color was left in her face disappeared.

"It's a reporter," she said. "From the Tribune business desk. She wants to know if I have a comment about my daughter's father."