I Married a Billionaire: Lost and Found(13)

"The accounts are in your name?" I frowned at him, realizing how little I knew about the day-to-day functions of the place I used to work.

"No, but I have direct access. They froze all of those, too."

"Well, as far as personal expenses go, I'm sure that Lindsey can help out, right?" I was trying to stay calm and reasonable, but it was getting more difficult by the moment.

"Lindsey," he repeated, sitting down heavily on the bed again. "God. I'll have to call her as soon as it's late enough."

"I'm sure she wouldn't mind hearing from you now," I said, gently. The sky was just beginning to be tinged with light around the edges. "She's your sister."

He shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "I'll let her get her sleep. There's nothing she can do now."

I couldn't argue with him there, so I sat back on the pillows and stared at the wall.

"Is this a bad dream?" he said, finally, after a long silence.




"Sorry," I replied, managing a wan smile as I patted him on the leg. "But I'm pretty sure it's not."

Suddenly, I felt very thirsty. I got up and walked down to the kitchen, fetching a water bottle from the fridge and drinking half of it in one gulp. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really make me feel any better.

There certainly wasn't going to be any more sleep tonight. This morning. Whatever. I felt like I should eat something to settle my stomach, but I also felt like even a handful of saltines would probably come right back up, in my current state. I wandered fitfully around the apartment for a while, my arms hugged around my chest, shivering a little but unsure if I was cold or just on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I couldn't stop running it over and over in my head. Why? How? Is this real? Did he do it? Why? There was no explanation that made sense to me. I didn't know much about professional investing, but I had a feeling that the broker would be working with some kind of secure system that wasn't easily compromised. If someone wanted to frame Daniel for insider trading, could they realistically do it?

How many times had I heard the "I was hacked!" excuse, especially from public figures? Was he really trying to pull that one on me? His own wife?

My stomach lurched.

I looked up and realized that Daniel was in the kitchen, contemplating a bottle of whiskey. I hurried out to snatch it from his hands.

"No," I said, putting it back into the cabinet. "I promise that's not going to make anything better."

"You don't think so?" There was just a touch of wry humor in his eyes - just enough to remind me that he was still the same as he always had been. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close and just listening to the sound of his heartbeat. It took a long time, but he finally embraced me back, squeezing my ribcage so hard it almost hurt.

I don't know how long we stood there, but by the time we broke apart, the sunrise was cutting sharply through the window above the sink. I squinted against it, turning away and walking back up to the bedroom with no clear idea of why I was going there. Maybe, if I just climbed back in bed and curled up under the covers, it would be like none of this ever happened.

Not likely.

***

It felt like an eternity before the judge's offices opened and Daniel was able to start putting in phone calls. Of course it was a labyrinthine process with voicemails and extensions and leaving messages with five different people, but eventually he did get a call back, which he took alone in the bedroom, with the door shut. I wasn't sure if he was trying to protect me from it, or if he just couldn't handle the added stress of being around another person. Either way, I wasn't really offended. I couldn't imagine what he must be going through, although it was no walk in the park for me, either.

I managed to eat some leftover pot roast by the time lunch rolled around, but Daniel was still subsisting off of juice and water until dinnertime, when he ate a few handfuls of almonds from the cupboard and then went back to call his broker again.

When he finally talked to me, I learned that his broker had located the trade in his transaction history, but could not account for it. The firm's security specialists were already working on it, but they apparently didn't have high hopes of finding any answers soon. Whoever had originated the trade had successfully covered his tracks - well enough that they had to launch something that they called a "forensics" investigation. I had absolutely no idea what that meant in this context, but I suspected it didn’t actually involve the scalpels and bone saws that I was picturing.

He'd also put in several calls with the owner of the company whose stock he'd allegedly sold. The whole thing had to do with a merger or an acquisition or something that he explained in such a scattered way I gave up trying to understand - but he insisted that he knew nothing about it, that in fact he could present cell phone records to the judge showing he'd had no contact with the man in weeks.

The company owner in question was in the middle of his once-yearly vacation in which he went completely offline. His very capable assistant who managed his affairs in absentia could shed absolutely no light on the situation, but she promised to send word to her boss's emergency contact number and he'd get back to Daniel as soon as he possibly could.

By the end of our conversation, my head was spinning and I felt like I understood even less than I had before. Hell - I was married to the man, but even I couldn't see how he was going to convince a judge of his innocence. How could he prove that he and his friend had no contact? They might have talked on pay phones, or burners, or…