“No.”
My answer came too quickly.
Marianne heard it.
“No, you’re certain? Or no, you never saw him?”
I stood beneath the coffee shop awning while traffic rolled through the intersection.
Rain had started lightly, turning the pavement dark.
“I never saw Adrian gamble.”
“Casinos?”
“No.”
“Sports betting?”
“No.”
“Online?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Poker?”
“He played with friends occasionally.”
“For money?”
“Small amounts. I think.”
Marianne was silent.
I hated the silence.
“Why are you asking?”
“Because debt plus concealed transactions plus unexplained cash withdrawals gives us several possibilities.”
“Gambling is one.”
“Yes.”
“What are the others?”
“Bad investments. Private loans. Business losses. Personal debts. Money owed to people he didn’t want you to know about.”
My stomach tightened.
“Which is worse?”
“That’s not a useful question yet.”
“It feels useful.”
“It isn’t.”
I walked toward my car.
“Should I tell Daniel?”
“I will.”
By the time I reached the apartment, Leah was waiting outside my door holding takeout containers and wearing the expression of someone who had already decided I wasn’t allowed to spend the evening alone.
“How bad?”
“Do you mean dinner or marriage?”
“Marriage.”
“Unknown debt.”
She stopped walking.
“What?”
“Adrian said he tried to use the house partly to cover a debt.”
“What debt?”
“He left before telling me.”
Leah’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
She handed me the food.
“I brought noodles.”
“That doesn’t seem responsive.”
“It’s what I have.”
Inside, I told her everything.
Not the complete forensic details—Marianne had warned me against spreading specifics—but enough.
Northstar.
The condominium.
The lender document.
Adrian’s admission that he had told Kelsey he expected to keep the house.
When I finished, Leah sat completely still.
“He promised your grandmother’s furniture to another woman?”
“That part seems to be bothering you most.”
“It’s accessible.”
“What?”
“Financial fraud is abstract. Stealing your grandmother’s dining table is something I can picture.”
“Please don’t steal it back preemptively.”
“I’m considering it.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
The sound felt strange.
Almost disloyal to the seriousness of everything.
Then my phone rang.
Daniel.
“Rachel, do you have a moment?”
I moved toward the balcony.
“Yes.”
“I want to ask about cash behavior in the household.”
“What kind?”
“Did Adrian regularly keep cash?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. A few hundred dollars, maybe.”
“Did he make large withdrawals?”
“I never monitored him closely.”
“Do you remember him explaining any?”
I thought.
There had been weekends when he said he needed cash for contractors.
Tips.
Business travel.
Client entertainment.
Nothing had seemed remarkable.
“Maybe.”
Daniel’s voice remained even.
“We identified a recurring pattern.”
“How recurring?”
“Every few weeks for most of the past year.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“How much?”
“Usually amounts small enough not to attract attention individually.”
“But together?”
“Substantial.”
I leaned against the balcony door.
“Where did it go?”
“That’s what we’re working on.”
“Did Adrian gamble?”
“I can’t answer that yet.”
“Marianne asked me the same thing.”
“Because it’s one possibility.”
I closed my eyes.
“What do you need from me?”
“Old credit-card statements if you have them. Personal checking records. Anything he might not have already produced.”
“I can find several years.”
“Good.”
The next day, I returned to the house again.
This time I went alone.
Marianne objected.
I reminded her that Adrian had no authorization to enter without notice.
She reminded me that legal restrictions didn’t create force fields.
I compromised by keeping Leah on the phone while I searched.
The house felt less familiar each time I entered.
Not because anything had changed.
Because I had.
I opened the file cabinet in the study.
Adrian had always hated physical records.
He called paper “prehistoric.”
I liked it.
Paper didn’t require passwords.
It didn’t disappear because an account was closed.
Behind old insurance renewals, I found credit-card statements going back four years.
I packed them into a plastic storage bin.
Then I noticed something else.
An envelope wedged beneath the bottom drawer.
It was unopened.
The return address belonged to a private lending company.
My pulse jumped.
The date was seven months earlier.
I called Marianne before opening it.
“Photograph the envelope first.”
I did.
“Now?”
“Open it carefully.”
Inside was a late-payment notice.
The account belonged to Adrian.
The balance made me sit down.
It was more than twenty thousand dollars.
“What does it say?”
I read the relevant lines aloud.
Past due.
Penalty.
Accelerated payment may be required.
Marianne asked for photographs.
I sent them.
“Do you recognize the lender?”
“No.”
“I do.”
That was not reassuring.
“What kind of company?”
“High-interest personal lending.”
“Why would Adrian borrow that much?”
“Unknown.”
The notice referenced an original balance larger than the remaining debt.
I searched the envelope again.
No application.
No explanation.
Only the account number.
Daniel called less than an hour later.
“That helps.”
“Helps how?”
“We found transfers matching repayment dates.”
“From Northstar?”
“Some.”
“So he borrowed personally, then used our money to repay it?”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly is becoming exhausting.”
“I understand.”
“No, you understand accounting.”
There was a pause.
“That’s fair.”
I apologized.
He ignored it.
“The important part is timing. The loan appears to predate Northstar.”
“By how much?”
“Several months.”
“So the company may not have created the debt.”
“Correct.”
I looked around the study.
“What did?”
“That’s the next question.”
That evening, another piece arrived.
Daniel sent a summary through Marianne.
Adrian had made multiple payments to an online merchant platform.
The descriptors were vague.
The amounts varied.
Some were small.
Some weren’t.
Marianne called.
“We need context.”
“For what?”
She gave me the merchant name.
I recognized it.
Not immediately.
Then I remembered seeing it advertised during basketball games.
Sports wagering.
My stomach dropped.
“Adrian watched games constantly.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No.”
“But?”
“He started caring about point spreads.”
“When?”
“Maybe a year ago.”
“Did you ask?”
“He said it was fantasy league stuff.”
Marianne sighed.
“That matters.”
“I should have noticed.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Do not turn his concealment into your investigative failure.”
I sat at the apartment table.
“He sat beside me.”
“Yes.”
“He placed bets while sitting beside me?”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“But if he did—”
“Rachel.”
I stopped.
She softened her voice.
“You were his wife, not his auditor.”
The next records arrived two days later.
This time, Daniel joined Marianne and me on a video call.
He shared his screen.
A chart appeared.
Dozens of transactions.
Sportsbook deposits.
Withdrawals.
Cash advances.
Credit-card payments.
Private loan payments.
Business-account transfers.
The pattern was messy but unmistakable.
Adrian had been gambling.
Not once.
Not casually.
Regularly.
I stared at the screen.
“How much did he lose?”
Daniel hesitated.
“We don’t have a complete figure.”
“What’s the minimum?”
He gave me a number.
I stopped hearing the rest of his sentence.
It was more money than I had earned in my first several years after college combined.
“Rachel?”
“I’m here.”
Daniel continued.
“Some winnings came back. We need gross deposits and withdrawals to calculate net losses accurately.”
“Why borrow?”
“Likely because liquidity tightened.”
“Then why keep gambling?”
He didn’t answer.
That wasn’t his job.
Marianne did.
“Because behavior doesn’t become rational simply because the consequences grow.”
I looked at the chart again.
The transactions intensified roughly eleven months earlier.
Northstar had been formed at almost the same time.
“Was Northstar created to hide the gambling?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Not necessarily.”
“What else was it doing?”
“Receiving money.”
“From where?”
“Several places.”
“Including us.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
He hesitated.
“One transfer came from Kelsey.”
I stared at him.
“How much?”
He told me.
It was significant.
“Why was she sending Adrian money?”
“We don’t know.”
“Investment?”
“Possibly.”
“For the condo?”
“Possibly.”
Marianne leaned toward the camera.
“This means Kelsey may not simply be a beneficiary of Adrian’s choices. She may have money tied up with him.”
I thought about her public post.
His house.
Her kitchen.
The wedding package.
The condominium.
“Maybe he told her Northstar was profitable.”
“Maybe,” Marianne said.
“Was it?”
Daniel answered.
“Not based on what we’ve seen.”
“So she may think she invested in a business.”
“Possible.”
“And the money went where?”
He changed the screen.
Another set of transactions.
Northstar funds had moved in several directions.
Renovation vendors.
Debt payments.
Transfers.
Cash withdrawals.
And gambling deposits.
I felt physically cold.
“He gambled with money she gave him.”
“We can’t assign every dollar to a specific destination,” Daniel said. “Funds were commingled.”
“But money entered.”
“Yes.”
“And gambling payments left.”
“Yes.”
I sat back.
For the first time, Kelsey became something other than the woman Adrian planned to marry.
She might also be a person he had lied to financially.
That did not make me sympathize with her.
Not yet.
But it changed the shape of the story.
“Does she know?”
Marianne answered.
“We have no evidence she does.”
“Are we going to tell her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she is represented only by whatever interests she has, not by us. And because premature contact could interfere with evidence.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“What happens now?”
“We obtain the sportsbook records.”
“And the private lender file.”
“Yes.”
“And the lender document with my signature.”
“Yes.”
A notification appeared on my phone.
Adrian again.
I almost ignored it.
Then I read the message.
I need access to the house tomorrow. Personal property.
I showed Marianne.
She frowned.
“Ask him to identify what he wants in writing.”
I typed exactly that.
His response took five minutes.
Business files from the study.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
I looked at the screen Daniel had just shown us.
“Marianne.”
“I see it.”
“The study has the old statements.”
“Yes.”
“And possibly other records.”
“Yes.”
“Can he take them?”
“No.”
“What do we do?”
Her answer was immediate.
“Nothing disappears from that room before we know exactly what he’s trying to retrieve.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: Adrian Came Back for the Study Files, but What He Reached for First Told Marianne Which Record Frightened Him Most
While I Waited for My Husband Beside a Hospital IV, He Arrived Carrying an Envelope Instead of Answers
Part 6 of 35
