Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 294

Chapter 281. What Reeve Found, Last.

CAMERON

The financial cleanup took longer than the criminal case itself, which surprised nobody who understood how these things actually worked. Marcus’s final report landed on my desk in early summer, two hundred and forty pages of forensic accounting that traced every dollar of Logan’s collapse with the same patient precision he’d brought to finding the original trail in the first place.

I read it carefully, because the parts that mattered most weren’t really about Logan anymore. They were about Nick.

“Hayes Industries is being restructured under new leadership,” Marcus told me over the phone, walking me through the summary before I tackled the full document.

“The board moved fast once the indictment landed. They’ve brought in an outside CEO, distanced the company entirely from Logan’s name and likeness, and frankly, the company itself is stable. The fraud was contained to the shell network Logan built personally, off the books, using his signing authority rather than corporate funds directly. The business itself wasn’t gutted by any of this.”

“And Logan’s personal assets,” I said.

“That’s where it gets complicated,” Marcus said. “Civil forfeiture proceedings are already underway for anything traceable to the criminal conspiracy, the shell accounts, obviously, but also certain properties and investment vehicles that the financial trail implicates. He’s going to lose most of what he personally controlled outside the company itself. What’s left, after the forfeitures and the legal fees and whatever fines accompany the sentencing, isn’t going to be much.”

I sat with that for a moment.

“What about Nick?” I said. “His inheritance, his trust, is any of that exposed?”

This was the question I’d been building toward since the indictment first landed, the specific thread I’d been quietly pulling on with Adaeze and a trust attorney for weeks now, careful and deliberate, the way I handled everything that mattered most.

“That’s the good news,” Marcus said. “Nick’s educational trust, the one Logan established when he was born, before any of the financial misconduct began, predates the criminal activity entirely. It’s clean. Untouchable by the forfeiture proceedings, since the funds were deposited years before any of the fraudulent transfers occurred, and there’s no commingling that a prosecutor could use to argue otherwise.”

“Good,” I said. “I want it kept that way. I want a complete firewall between anything connected to Logan’s remaining assets and anything that touches Nick.”

“Already in motion,” Marcus said. “Your trust attorney’s been thorough.”

I met with Adaeze and the trust attorney, a careful, methodical woman named Patricia Lindqvist, whom Adaeze had recommended specifically for her experience with exactly this kind of situation, children whose financial futures needed protecting from a parent’s collapse.

“The existing trust is solid,” Patricia said, spreading documents across the table between us. “But I’d recommend restructuring it further, given everything that’s happened. Right now, Logan retains nominal trustee status on the original document, which is largely symbolic given his current circumstances, but symbolic isn’t good enough. I want to formally remove him as trustee and replace him with someone the court will recognize as appropriate, given the custody ruling.”

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