Chapter 6 - The Payments Victoria Couldn't Explain
I traced only records I had legal access to.
They were enough.
My monthly transfers entered an account Victoria used for household expenses.
Within days, similar amounts repeatedly moved elsewhere.
Not exactly the same amounts.
Close enough to establish a pattern worth questioning.
The recipient wasn't a person.
It was a small consulting company.
Hollis Advisory Group.
The same company appeared in Rachel's old foundation notes.
I found the name because Rachel's laptop was still in a box in my closet.
I hadn't opened it since her death.
Not because I couldn't.
Because grief had turned ordinary objects into land mines.
Her password was our anniversary.
Inside was an unfinished spreadsheet.
Hollis Advisory Group appeared eleven times.
Rachel had highlighted every payment.
Beside the final one she'd written:
Ask V why HAG address = storage mailbox?
My mother hadn't merely been arguing with Rachel.
Rachel had been investigating her.
But when I showed Margaret, she shook her head.
“You're missing something.”
“What?”
“Victoria didn't create Hollis.”
“Who did?”
Margaret hesitated.
“Your father.”
That stopped me.
My father had been dead six years.
May you like
Yet the company was still receiving money.
And according to Rachel's spreadsheet, someone had continued authorizing those payments long after his death.
