A room-service menu neither of us touched that night.
Sophie fell asleep quickly.
I did not.
I sat at the desk with Clare’s divorce papers spread in front of me.
They were thorough.
Her attorney was Gregory Foss, a family-law lawyer with more than a decade of experience.
The filing cited irreconcilable differences.
Clare requested the house and a significant share of our liquid assets.
Then I reached the section describing my employment.
My primary income source was listed as salaried employment at an unnamed residential services company.
I read the line twice.
Clare had either misunderstood the truth for eight years or understood far more than she had ever admitted.
Neither possibility was comforting.
At 11:48 p.m., I opened my laptop.
I logged into the company system.
Then I searched every Collins-connected record.
Forty-seven names.
I started an internal audit covering thirty-six months.
I want to be precise about what happened next.
I did not sit there furiously clicking a button that fired an entire family.
I reviewed records.
The audit software took ninety-four minutes to compile the results.
I made terrible hotel coffee and read everything it returned.
David Collins, Clare’s brother, was a regional procurement supervisor.
His fuel-card records showed discrepancies going back nineteen months.
Total: $34,200.
Company vehicle GPS records also showed family trips that did not match assigned routes.
Marcus Collins worked in accounts receivable.
His records showed duplicate invoice submissions across six client accounts, with a total exposure of $61,400.
Other Collins-connected files showed questionable expense activity.
Martin himself did not work for me, but his name appeared as the beneficiary of several expenses submitted by relatives—restaurant bills, a resort stay, rounds of golf—classified as business entertainment.
I kept reviewing.
By 3:30 a.m., I had forty-seven files separated into two groups.
Fourteen contained documented financial irregularities.
Thirty-three did not.
Some of those thirty-three were good employees.
Their connection to the Collins family was not evidence of misconduct, and I refused to pretend otherwise.
I secured the audit results on the company server.
Then, at 3:47 a.m., I called Robert Kaine.
Robert had been my corporate attorney since 2014.
He was sixty-two, methodical, almost impossible to rattle, and one of the few people I trusted to tell me I was wrong while I was still angry enough to believe I could not possibly be wrong.
He answered on the third ring.
“Daniel?”
“I need help.”
I told him everything.
Not just Christmas Eve.
Eight years.
Clare’s request that I hide ownership.
The Collins network inside the company.
The divorce papers.