Martin had choices.
He made terrible ones.
But when investigators reconstructed what happened, I finally understood how Kristen got inside my company.
Fifteen years earlier, Martin had made a financial mistake.
Not a bookkeeping error.
A secret loan.
His wife, Elaine, had developed cancer.
Their insurance covered treatment but not everything.
Martin borrowed $180,000 against a vendor rebate account controlled through one of our older companies.
He intended to replace it after selling land.
Then the market crashed.
The repayment took fourteen months.
When he finally restored the full amount, he never told me.
No loss remained on the books.
But he had used company money without authorization.
That mattered.
He hid it for fifteen years.
Kristen discovered it.
How?
Trevor.
My son had once asked Martin for access to archived project records because he was “learning the family business.”
Martin gave him too much.
Kristen was better with documents than Trevor.
