Chapter 7 - What the Audit Revealed
The investigation moved quickly.
Northstar’s auditors provided authorities with invoices, payroll records, forged signatures, and bank transfers.
Frank claimed he had misunderstood the contracts.
The evidence proved otherwise.
He had created false subcontracting companies and directed payments into accounts controlled by relatives. Over five years, the scheme had taken more than six million dollars from Northstar.
Preston agreed to cooperate in exchange for reduced charges.
He admitted that Frank had promised everyone Nicholas would never discover the fraud.
“Why not?” an investigator asked.
“Because Frank said Nicholas was just Isabella’s husband. He said the real executives didn’t know him.”
The statement eventually reached Nicholas.
He did not laugh.
The fraud had harmed more than Northstar.
Several small contractors had gone unpaid because Frank redirected funds. Workers had lost health coverage. One family-owned supplier nearly closed.
Nicholas ordered Northstar to pay every legitimate contractor, even when the company was not legally required to do so.
“We won’t let workers suffer for Frank’s decisions,” he told the board.
Meanwhile, Isabella attempted to present herself as an innocent spouse.
Her attorney argued that she had signed documents without understanding them.
But the audit contained emails in which Isabella asked Frank to move money from an affordable housing account to pay for a foundation gala in Paris.
In one message, she wrote:
Nicholas never checks anything. He’s too busy playing handyman.
When Nicholas read the sentence, he felt something inside him finally close.
Not break.
Close.
He had spent years wondering whether the woman he loved still existed beneath Isabella’s pride.
The email gave him his answer.
The custody evaluation became the most painful part of the divorce.
Mackenzie told the counselor she loved her mother but did not feel safe around Frank.
“Grandpa says mean things about Daddy,” she explained. “Mommy tells me not to make him angry.”
Nicholas never coached her.
He never spoke badly about Isabella in front of her.
He simply created a stable routine: school, dinner, stories, counseling, and weekends at the lodge.
Isabella visited twice under temporary arrangements.
During the first visit, she spent most of the time asking Mackenzie what Nicholas had purchased and whether he had mentioned the mansion.
During the second, Mackenzie asked her a question.
“Why didn’t you come outside when Grandpa made us leave?”
Isabella had no answer.
After the visit, she sat alone in her car for nearly an hour.
For the first time, she began to understand that losing Nicholas’s money was not the worst consequence of Christmas Eve.
She had lost her daughter’s trust.
And trust could not be recovered by filing paperwork or making promises.
It had to be earned through actions.
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Nicholas knew that better than anyone.
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