Suddenly, Madeline clamped a hand over her mouth, shot out of her chair, and sprinted down the hallway. Seconds later, the sound of violent retching echoed from the guest bathroom.
I found her collapsed on the cold hexagonal tiles, sobbing uncontrollably into a towel. I knelt beside her, gathering her hair at the nape of her neck.
“I let him do this,” she wailed, her voice echoing in the small room. “I handed him the knife. I signed the papers. I’m an engineer, Mom. I’m supposed to be smart. I’m so stupid!”
I gripped her shoulders with enough force to ground her, forcing her to look into my eyes.
“Listen to me,” I commanded, my voice fierce and uncompromising. “Being abused, being manipulated, is not empirical proof that you are stupid. It is proof that a predator systematically studied where your heart was tender, where your empathy lived, and he weaponized it against you. He didn’t hack your bank account, Madeline. He hacked your love.”
She stared at me, her chest heaving, desperately trying to decide if she was worthy of believing that sentence.
I repeated it. Again. And again. Until the panic in her eyes began to recede, replaced by a flickering, microscopic ember of anger.
When we returned to the dining room, David was staring at his laptop screen, completely motionless. The atmosphere in the room had plummeted ten degrees.
“David?” Rebecca prompted. “What is it?”
He slowly turned the laptop to face us. “There is a secondary layer to S&C Strategic Holdings. It wasn’t just siphoning cash. There are active insurance policies.”
