I Do Know Where the Money Went

After twenty-one years of marriage, my husband ends it at his company’s 25th-anniversary gala, right in front of four hundred employees.

He introduces his marketing director as his “new partner in every sense.” Two security guards walk me to the valet. My badge dies before I reach the door. I know how long that takes. I set up the badges.

For twenty years I kept the books for Randy Kubiak’s empire. Five Ford dealerships across Houston. Eleven hundred and forty accounts, and I numbered every one. When Hurricane Harvey flooded three hundred cars on the Baytown lot, I filed every claim. Randy took the credit on the evening news.

In the divorce papers, I’m “a bookkeeper employed by the business.”

His lawyers swear to the court that Kubiak Ford is worth nine million dollars. In January, he told his bank sixty-one.

Randy is sure his lawyers can hide every dollar. He forgot who built the system he hid them in.

Only one man at that gala noticed I’d gone. Gus Treviño grew up in a Rio Grande Valley packing shed, and now he chairs the bank that holds every loan Randy has. Six years ago I answered a question my husband couldn’t, and Gus has remembered it to the dollar ever since. The day we meet again, he steps away from every dollar Randy owes his bank, so he can ask me to dinner with clean hands.

“She’s the best finance mind in this room,” he tells a ballroom full of Houston money. “I’ve known that for six years.”

So when Randy tells every dealer in Houston that I’m the thief, Gus doesn’t make a single call to fix it.

He stands one step behind me and lets me talk.

I do know where the money went.

Tropes & themes:

Revenge by the numbers: she built the system he hid the money in

The woman who kept his books finally balances them

Older heroine (46) who takes her maiden name back

A self-made banker who noticed her years ago and says so out loud

A hero who steps aside so she can win it herself

Smug husband, very public downfall

No reconciliation

Dual POV

Complete standalone, HEA