Chapter 11 - The Red Book
Adrian refused to answer questions about the red book.
That lasted six hours.
At 4:02 p.m., federal agents executed a search warrant at Evelyn Voss’s townhouse.
At 4:19, they found a red leather ledger inside a false-bottom drawer in her study.
At 5:07, Nora called me.
“Sit down.”
“I am sitting.”
“Good. The ledger contains handwritten approvals for off-book payments going back nine years.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that your divorce case may become the least important thing happening to Adrian.”
The red book was Adrian’s.
His initials were embossed inside the cover.
He had used it during the first years of Voss Meridian when he distrusted cloud accounting and wrote deal notes by hand.
Then, according to him, he lost it.
He had not.
Evelyn had kept it.
Some entries were hers.
Some were Adrian’s.
And some included a third set of initials.
V.H.
Vanessa Hale.
Vanessa stared at the scanned pages in Nora’s conference room.
“That’s not my writing.”
“Some of it isn’t,” Priya said.
Vanessa looked at her sharply.
“Some?”
Priya slid three entries forward.
“These are yours.”
Vanessa went pale.
She did not deny it.
“What did you approve?” I asked.
She rubbed her hands together.
“Marketing payments.”
“Through Luxembourg?”
“I didn’t know where they went.”
“You signed routing instructions.”
“I signed what Evelyn put in front of me.”
Nora’s voice was flat. “That is not the defense you think it is.”
Vanessa stood up.
“I came here to help.”
“You came here because the building is burning and you noticed you were inside it,” I said.
She stared at me.
Then she nodded.
“Yes.”
Again, the ugly truth.
We kept reading.
One page from four years earlier showed a transfer of $11.2 million to Meridian Strategic Recovery.
I recognized the name.
“That company bought Voss debt during the recession.”
Priya looked at me. “Your father’s fund?”
“No. A competitor.”
She searched the entity.
Then stopped.
“Actually… no.”
The beneficial owner was hidden behind two trusts.
One of them traced back to a law firm my father had used.
The other traced back to Evelyn.
I stared.
My father and Evelyn had once co-owned the debt vehicle that kept Adrian’s company alive.
That made no sense.
My father hated Evelyn.
Or said he did.
Nora’s phone rang.
She answered, listened, then looked at me with an expression I did not like.
“What now?”
She covered the microphone.
“The trust attorney found a sealed letter from your father.”
“To me?”
“No.”
She paused.
May you like
“To Evelyn Voss.”
