Chapter 4 - The Audit Begins
Two weeks later, I moved into a modest one-bedroom apartment in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The room was sparsely furnished—just a mattress, a small kitchen table, and my study desk—but for the first time in twenty-four years, the air felt clean. There were no raised voices, no sudden outbursts of violence, and no suffocating guilt hanging over my head.
On Monday morning, I walked through the heavy glass doors of the Ohio State Auditor’s Office, wearing a crisp navy suit. My fellowship was in the Special Investigations Unit, the department tasked with investigating white-collar crime, public corruption, and large-scale financial fraud.
My supervisor, Marcus Vance, a sharp, veteran investigator with silver hair and a quiet demeanor, welcomed me into his office. On his desk sat a thick, black folder labelled Mercer Home Improvements LLC / Criminal Referral.
"Talia," Marcus said, motioning for me to sit down. "I've reviewed the preliminary files you submitted through your attorney, along with the campus police report. What your parents did to your identity and your grandmother's trust is clear cut. Identity fraud, grand larceny, and forgery."
"Have you filed the formal indictment?" I asked, my hands folded neatly on my lap.
"The police department in your hometown has handed the identity theft case over to the county prosecutor," Marcus explained. "Normally, as a state auditor fellow, you wouldn't be allowed anywhere near an active investigation involving your own relatives due to obvious conflict of interest."
"I understand," I said, feeling a slight sting of disappointment.
"However," Marcus continued, tapping the folder, "the financial forensic analysis you completed yourself—the spreadsheet mapping out your father's business accounts—caught the attention of the Department of Revenue. Your father hasn't just been stealing from you, Talia. Mercer Home Improvements has been running a massive tax evasion and invoice inflation scheme across three counties for the last six years."
I sat up straight. "Double bookkeeping?"
"Exactly," Marcus nodded. "He was taking private loans in your name, claiming them as 'business investments' on his tax forms to write off non-existent expenses, while pocketing cash payments from residential clients without reporting them. He was using your identity to mask his paper trail. Your personal case was just the tip of the iceberg."
Marcus slid a red pen across the desk toward me.
"You can't be the lead investigator on his case, Talia. But as the primary whistle-blower and a certified forensic assistant, the county prosecutor wants you to walk our team through every single invoice, bank ledger, and signature you analyzed. You built the cage, Talia. Now we need you to help us lock the door."
That evening, I sat in the state auditor's evidence room, staring at digitized records of my father's business transactions spanning the last seven years. Page after page revealed the true depth of his deceit.
While Malcolm was screaming at me for being a financial burden, he was spending thousands of dollars at high-end casinos, buying luxury hunting equipment, and transferring money into private personal accounts. Every time his company faced bankruptcy due to his reckless spending, he simply forged my name on another loan or siphoned another ten thousand dollars from my grandmother's trust fund.
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He had built his entire lifestyle on my shoulder, crushing my future to keep himself afloat, all while convincing me that I owed him my life.
I picked up the red pen and began marking every fraudulent transaction, one by one.
