Chapter 3
I did not sleep that night.
By sunrise, I had made one decision.
I could not handle this as a divorce problem anymore.
I needed to know what Ellis had done.
And I needed to get Noah home.
Denise arrived at my apartment shortly after eight.
She took one look around.
“You weren’t exaggerating about starting over.”
I gave her a humorless smile.
“No.”
I showed her the black card.
Then I showed her Noah’s messages.
She read everything twice.
When she looked up, her face had changed.
“This is beyond family court.”
“I know.”
“We need federal investigators.”
Fear shot through me.
“No.”
“Sabrina—”
“My son is with Ellis.”
“All the more reason.”
“What happens if Ellis finds out before Noah is safe?”
Denise stopped.
That was the problem.
Ellis controlled Noah’s location.
His phone.
His transportation.
Everything.
“If we move too quickly,” I said, “he could disappear with him.”
Denise nodded slowly.
“Do you know where they are?”
“Noah said they left Atlanta.”
“Can we trace the number?”
“It’s probably a temporary phone.”
She stared at the messages again.
“Who is Grant?”
“Ellis’s brother.”
“Tell me about him.”
Grant Chappell was five years older than Ellis.
Quiet.
Unmarried.
Always serious.
He had handled the company finances for more than a decade.
At family dinners, Grant barely spoke to me.
Once, years earlier, I walked into Ellis’s office while the brothers were arguing.
Grant immediately stopped talking.
Ellis later told me they were discussing taxes.
Now I remembered one sentence.
“You can’t keep shifting numbers forever.”
At the time, it meant nothing.
Now it meant everything.
Denise asked, “Do you still have access to any old company records?”
“Maybe.”
Before Noah was born, I had briefly helped Ellis organize Chappell Global’s compliance systems.
My background was financial compliance.
Ironically, the career Ellis convinced me to abandon was exactly what I needed now.
I opened an old storage drive.
Most folders were family photos.
Taxes.
Household documents.
Then I found a directory labeled CGT ARCHIVE.
My pulse jumped.
Inside were spreadsheets from almost thirteen years earlier.
Vendor payments.
International freight contracts.
Insurance settlements.
Nothing recent enough to explain six million.
But patterns do not always disappear.
I began reading.
Four hours passed.
Then I found something strange.
A vendor called Meridian Consulting received repeated payments.
$82,000.
$115,000.
$97,500.
No description of services.
I searched online.
Meridian Consulting had dissolved nine years earlier.
Its registered manager had been Grant.
“Look at this,” I said.
Denise leaned closer.
“If Grant owned the vendor while serving as CFO…”
“Then Ellis’s company was paying Grant’s company.”
“Could have been legitimate.”
“Maybe.”
I kept searching.
Another company appeared.
Bellweather Holdings.
Same pattern.
Hundreds of thousands.
Registered offshore.
My stomach twisted.
I remembered Ellis taking frequent trips to Grand Cayman during the first years of our marriage.
He called them investor meetings.
I had never questioned him.
Then Denise’s phone rang.
She stepped into the hallway.
While she was gone, someone emailed me.
No subject.
No message.
One attachment.
I stared at it.
The sender was an address made of random letters.
I opened the attachment.
A photograph appeared.
Noah.
My breath stopped.
He was sitting inside what looked like a hotel restaurant.
Ellis sat across from him.
Grant stood behind them.
The image had been taken from a distance.
Below it was a timestamp.
7:43 a.m.
That morning.
Then another email arrived.
This one contained only a location.
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.
I called Denise back into the room.
“Someone knows where they are.”
She stared at the photograph.
“Who sent this?”
“I don’t know.”
A third email arrived.
DON’T CONTACT POLICE YET.
Denise frowned.
“I don’t like that.”
Neither did I.
Then another line appeared.
NOAH IS TRYING TO HELP YOU. LET HIM.
I typed a reply.
WHO ARE YOU?
The response came seconds later.
SOMEONE WHO OWES YOUR SON HIS LIFE.
My heart jumped.
“What does that mean?”
Denise shook her head.
I wrote again.
HOW DO I GET NOAH BACK?
No answer.
Then my phone rang.
Ellis.
I forced myself to breathe before answering.
“Hello?”
“You went through my old records.”
I froze.
Across the room, Denise immediately began writing something.
HOW DOES HE KNOW?
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Ellis laughed softly.
“You were always a terrible liar.”
I looked at the laptop.
Was he monitoring it?
My skin crawled.
“You left the company thirteen years ago, Sabrina.”
“So?”
“So stay out of things you don’t understand.”
“My son is with you. I understand that.”
“Noah is fine.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“He doesn’t want to speak to you.”
My chest burned.
“That’s a lie.”
Ellis became silent.
I had never challenged him that directly during our marriage.
“You’re emotional.”
“And you’re hiding something.”
His tone changed.
“Careful.”
One word.
Quiet.
Cold.
Denise pointed toward her phone and began recording.
I continued.
“Where are you?”
“Atlanta.”
Another lie.
“Put Noah on.”
“No.”
“Then bring him home.”
“He is home with me.”
I clenched my jaw.
“Why are you afraid of a twelve-year-old?”
Silence.
Then Ellis said something that chilled me.
“I’m afraid of what people convince children to do.”
He ended the call.
Denise looked at me.
“He knows Noah took the card.”
“Yes.”
“Then we cannot wait much longer.”
My email chimed again.
The anonymous sender had returned.
This message contained a scanned document.
A list of names.
Dozens.
Beside each name was an amount.
$120,000.
$300,000.
$450,000.
At the bottom:
TOTAL CLIENT FUNDS DIVERTED: $18,640,000.
My hands shook.
The six million was only part of it.
Then I saw one name near the middle.
MARTIN VALE — $780,000.
I recognized it.
Martin Vale had been Ellis’s business partner.
And seven years earlier, Martin had died in a car crash.
I looked at Denise.
“He told me Martin died owing him money.”
Another email appeared.
Martin didn’t owe Ellis anything.
Ellis stole from him.
May you like
Then the final message:
And I can prove Martin’s crash was not an accident.
