Chapter 2 - THE TRANSFER
I stared at Javier’s laptop.
The message remained in the corner of the screen.
My love, did she sign the mortgage yet?
For several seconds, I couldn’t move.
Wyatt stood behind me holding a bag of frozen peas against his swollen cheek.
“Naomi?”
I didn’t answer.
I clicked the notification.
The message came from a woman named Camila Torres.
I knew that name.
Javier had mentioned her dozens of times during the past year.
A “client.”
A real-estate consultant.
Someone whose company supposedly needed his help with commercial accounts.
She was also the reason Javier had started coming home at midnight smelling like expensive perfume and telling me he had been trapped in “client dinners.”
My stomach tightened.
I opened the conversation.
The newest message was bad.
The messages above it were worse.
Camila: Once Naomi signs the refinance, we’ll have enough for closing.
Javier: She won’t read it. She never reads anything when she’s busy with product launches.
My fingers went cold.
Another message.
Camila: What about the $150K?
Javier: Already moved.
I stopped breathing.
I scrolled.
Camila: From her company?
Javier: Technically from our household. Don’t worry about details.
Camila: Javier, her name is the only one on that business.
Javier: Not for much longer.
Wyatt lowered the frozen peas.
“What?”
I couldn’t speak.
There was an attachment beneath Javier’s message.
I opened it.
A bank confirmation appeared.
TRANSFER COMPLETED: $150,000.00
Originating account:
NAOMI ALVAREZ — SOLARA BEAUTY OPERATING RESERVE
Destination:
COPPER CREST ESCROW SERVICES
Reference:
SCOTTSDALE RESIDENTIAL ACQUISITION
I stared at the screen.
Solara Beauty was mine.
Not Javier’s.
Mine.
I had started it nine years earlier from my kitchen with $6,000 I had saved working at a department-store cosmetics counter.
I mixed early samples by hand.
Packed orders at midnight.
Delivered boxes myself.
When Javier met me, Solara was already profitable.
When we married four years ago, it employed twenty-eight people.
Now it employed seventy-three.
Javier liked introducing himself as “part of the family business.”
He wasn’t.
I had occasionally allowed him to approve routine vendor payments when I traveled, but he had no authority to move six figures.
“How could he transfer that much?” Wyatt asked.
“I don’t know.”
Then I saw the date.
Three weeks earlier.
Three weeks.
The money had been gone for three weeks, and I had never noticed because our controller had been recovering from surgery and Javier had volunteered to “help manage operations.”
I clicked the escrow attachment.
That was when my marriage ended completely.
There was a purchase agreement.
A four-bedroom house in Scottsdale.
Pool.
Gated community.
Outdoor kitchen.
Purchase price:
$825,000.
Buyers:
Javier Alvarez and Camila Torres.
My husband was buying a house with another woman.
Using my money.
Wyatt whispered something I had never heard him say in front of me before.
“Son of a—”
“Wyatt.”
“Sorry.”
I kept scrolling.
Camila had sent photographs of furniture.
Bedrooms.
A dining table.
A nursery.
Then I saw one message that made my hands tremble.
Camila: Your mother says she wants the downstairs suite.
Javier had replied:
She earned it after putting up with Naomi this long.
I laughed.
It didn’t sound like laughter.
Wyatt looked frightened.
“Naomi?”
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m not.”
There were dozens of documents on Javier’s desktop.
I opened a folder named SV PROJECT.
Inside was a refinance application against my Phoenix apartment.
The apartment Lydia had called “her son’s house” thirty minutes earlier.
The property my grandmother had left me before I married Javier.
The estimated cash-out amount was $310,000.
There was a document bearing my name.
My signature appeared at the bottom.
I had never signed it.
Wyatt leaned closer.
“Is that your signature?”
“It looks like it.”
“But?”
“It isn’t.”
Someone had copied my signature from another document.
A second file contained instructions from Javier to Camila.
Once Naomi signs the final disclosure, the lender can release the funds. I already handled everything else.
Apparently the forged application wasn’t enough.
They still needed one final signature from me.
Suddenly I remembered Javier asking me that morning to sign an “insurance renewal.”
The papers were sitting inside his briefcase.
I walked across the room.
Opened it.
And there they were.
The refinancing documents.
A yellow sticky note marked where he wanted me to sign.
I sat down.
Wyatt whispered, “Were you going to sign these?”
“Yes.”
“Without reading them?”
I looked at him.
“I trusted my husband.”
That sentence hurt more than anything else.
I took out my phone.
First, I photographed every page.
Then I recorded a video scrolling through the messages.
Then I copied the files onto two flash drives.
My hands were shaking so badly that Wyatt finally took over.
“You need to call someone.”
“I know.”
“The police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to understand exactly what he did before he knows I found it.”
I called my business attorney, Rachel Kim.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Naomi?”
“I need you.”
There was something in my voice that made her stop immediately.
“What happened?”
“My husband transferred $150,000 from Solara.”
Silence.
“What?”
“He also appears to have forged mortgage documents against my apartment.”
Another silence.
“Do not confront him.”
“I already threw him out.”
“Naomi.”
“His mother hit Wyatt.”
“What?”
“It’s a long night.”
Rachel’s professional voice took over.
“Listen to me carefully. Do not delete anything. Do not move money between accounts unless instructed by the bank’s fraud department. Photograph every document. Change your personal passwords from a clean device. Call your bank’s fraud line. Then call Solara’s controller.”
“I have the laptop.”
“Keep it secure.”
“Javier will come back for it.”
“Do not be alone when he does.”
I looked at Wyatt.
My eighteen-year-old brother had traveled seven hours to begin college.
He should have been unpacking clothes.
Instead, his cheek was swollen because my mother-in-law had hit him, and he was helping me preserve evidence of financial fraud.
Guilt nearly crushed me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Wyatt frowned.
“For what?”
“This.”
He looked around at the broken plates still scattered across the dining room.
Then at Javier’s laptop.
Then back at me.
“You didn’t do this.”
That simple sentence nearly broke me.
I called the bank.
The fraud department froze outgoing transfers.
Copper Crest Escrow still held the $150,000 because the house closing had not yet occurred.
That meant there was a chance to recover it.
The representative asked whether I recognized the transfer authorization.
“No.”
“Did anyone else have account access?”
“My husband temporarily had vendor-payment privileges.”
“Was he authorized to initiate this transfer?”
“No.”
The representative paused.
“Mrs. Alvarez, I strongly recommend filing a formal fraud claim tonight.”
“I will.”
At 11:42 p.m., I changed the locks electronically.
At midnight, I changed every password Javier might know.
At 12:17, Solara’s controller confirmed the transfer had been disguised as a vendor payment to something called CCT Expansion Services.
Fake invoice.
Fake vendor code.
Real money.
Then another email arrived on Javier’s laptop.
Camila.
Why aren’t you answering?
Thirty seconds later:
Javier, the escrow company says Naomi’s bank just flagged the transfer.
Then:
CALL ME NOW.
I stared at the screen.
They knew.
A minute later, someone pounded on my front door.
Wyatt jumped.
“Naomi?”
Another pounding.
Then Javier’s voice.
“Open the door!”
I walked toward the security monitor.
Javier stood outside.
May you like
Lydia was beside him.
And judging from the look on my husband’s face, he already knew exactly what I had found.
