“That will take weeks,” I said.
“It will take as long as it takes,” Vance said. “And if we find that you had any knowledge of this account before today, the state will file its own charges.”
She took a single sheet of paper from her folder and laid it in front of me, alongside a black ballpoint pen.
“This is the authorization for a full forensic audit of Miller Engineering Associates,” Julian said.
I picked up the pen, its plastic cold in my fingers.
My hand hovered over the signature line.
“If I sign this, everything is public?” I asked.
“Everything,” Julian said.
I pressed the pen to the paper.
The ink on the forensic audit authorization was barely dry when my mother called, her voice uncharacteristically soft, asking me to come to the brownstone.
I stood by the mantelpiece in her parlor, my hand resting near a silver-framed portrait of my father.
