Danielle Steel - Amazing Grace

“I don't know,” he said honestly, and then looked her in the eye. He looked terrified, and so was she. “I may go down on this one, Sarah. I've done this kind of thing before. And I've helped Sully out too. We're old friends. We just never got caught before, and I was always able to clean it up at my end. This time I'm up shit creek.”

“Oh, my God,” Sarah said softly. “What happens if they prosecute you?”

“I don't know. This one's going to be hard to cover. I don't think Sully can postpone the audit anyway. The timing of it is at the discretion of his investors, and they don't like giving anyone time to do fancy footwork or cook the books. And we sure cooked them. We fucking fried them. I don't know if he tried to postpone his audit once he saw we had an earthquake and I didn't transfer the funds back to him. Sixty million is a little tough to slip under the rug. And it's a hole they'll notice. Worse yet, the trail leads directly to my door. Unless Sully pulls off a miracle at his end before Monday, we're totally fucked.

“If the auditors figure it out, the SEC will be after me in about five minutes. And I'm a sitting duck waiting for it to happen here, but I can't run away from it now. If it happens, it happens. We'll have to get a terrific lawyer and see if we can make a deal with the federal prosecutor, if it comes to that. Other than that, I'd have to run away to Brazil, and I'm not doing that to you. So I guess we sit here, waiting for the other shoe to drop, after the dust settles from the earthquake. I tried my BlackBerry a little while ago, and it's as dead as a doornail. We just have to wait and see what happens … I'm sorry, Sarah,” he added. He didn't know what else to say to her, and there were tears in her eyes when she looked at him. She had never, ever suspected him of being dishonest, and now she felt as though a wrecking ball had hit her.

“How could you do something like that?” she asked, with tears rolling down her cheeks. She hadn't moved. She just sat staring at him, unable to believe what he had said. But it was obvious that it was true. Her life had instantly become a horror movie.

“I figured we'd never get caught,” he said, shrugging. It seemed incredible to him too, but for different reasons than what was upsetting Sarah. Seth didn't get it. He had no idea how betrayed Sarah felt by his confession to her.

“Even if you didn't get caught, how could you do something so dishonest? You broke every imaginable law, misrepresenting your assets to your investors. What if you'd lost all their money?”

“I figured I could cover it. I always did. And what are you complaining about? Look how fast I built my business. How do you think you got all this?” He waved his arms grandly around their bedroom, and she realized she didn't know him. She thought she did, but she didn't. It was as though the Seth she knew had vanished, and a criminal had taken his place.

“And what happens to all this if you go to prison?” She had never expected him to be this successful, but they had a big lifestyle now. The house in the city, another mammoth house in Tahoe, their plane, cars, assets, jewelry. He had built a house of cards that was about to fall down around them, and she couldn't help wondering how bad it could get. Seth was looking stressed and embarrassed, as well he should.

“I guess it goes down the tubes,” he said simply. “Even if I don't go to prison. I'm going to have to pay fines, and interest on the money I borrowed.”

“You didn't borrow it, you took it. It wasn't Sully's to give either. It belongs to his investors, not either of you. You made a deal with your buddy so you could lie to people. Nothing about that is okay, Seth.” She didn't want him to get caught, for his sake and theirs, but she knew that it was only justice if he did.

“Thanks for the lecture on morality,” he said bitterly. “In any case, to answer your question, all this would probably go, pretty quickly. They'd seize all our stuff, or some of it, the houses, the plane, and most of the rest. What they don't take, we can sell.” He sounded almost matter-of-fact about it. As soon as the earthquake hit the night before, he knew his goose was cooked.

“And how are we supposed to live?”

“Borrow money from friends, I guess. I don't know, Sarah. We'll have to figure that out when it happens. Right now, today, we're okay. Nobody is going to come after me in the middle of the aftermath of an earthquake. We'll just have to see what happens next week.” But Sarah could figure out as well as he could that their whole world was about to come down around their ears. There was no way to avoid it, after the fancy footwork he had done. He had put their life at risk in the worst possible way.

“Do you think they'd take our house away?” She suddenly looked panicked as she glanced around the room. This was home to her now. She didn't need a home as elaborate as this one, but this was where they lived, the house their children had been born into. The prospect of losing everything frightened her. From one minute to the next, they could be destitute, if Seth got arrested and prosecuted. She started to feel frantic about it. She'd have to find a job, a place to live. And where would Seth be? In prison? Only hours before, all she had wanted was to know that her children were alive and safe after the earthquake, that their house hadn't fallen down around them. And suddenly, with what Seth had revealed to her, everything else had, and all they had for sure now were their kids. She didn't even know who Seth was, after what he'd told her. She'd been married to a stranger for four years. He was the father of her children. She had trusted and loved him.

She started to cry harder as she thought about it, and Seth came to put his arms around her, but she wouldn't let him. She didn't know if he was ally or foe now. Without even thinking about her and the children, he had put them all in jeopardy. She was furious at him, and heartbroken over what he'd done.

“I love you, babe,” he said softly, and she looked at him in amazement.

“How can you say that? I love you too. But look what you did to us, all of us. Not just yourself and me, but the kids too. We may get thrown out into the street. And you could wind up in prison.” And almost certainly would.

“It may not be that bad,” he tried to reassure her, but she didn't believe him. She knew too much about SEC regulations herself to swallow the platitudes he was handing her. He was in extreme danger of being arrested and going to prison. And if he did, their life, as they knew it, would go with him. Their lives would never be the same again.

“What do we do now?” she asked miserably, blowing her nose on a tissue. She didn't look like the glamorous young socialite of the night before. She was like a very frightened woman. She was wearing a sweater over her evening gown, her feet were bare as she sat on their bed, crying. She looked like a teenager whose world had just come to an end. And it just had, thanks to her husband.

She took down her French twist and let her dark hair fall over her shoulders. She seemed half her age as she sat there, glaring at him, feeling betrayed as she never had before. Not for the money and lifestyle they would lose, although that mattered too. Everything had seemed so secure and that had been important to her, for their children. But more than that, he had robbed them of the happy life he had set up for them, the sense of safety she counted on. He had risked all of them, when he transferred the money Sully Markham lent him. He had shot her life out of a cannon right along with his.

“I guess all we can do is wait,” Seth said quietly, as he walked across the room and stared out the window. There were fires burning below them, and in the morning sunshine, he could see damage to houses near them. Trees were down, balconies were hanging at odd angles, chimneys had toppled off roofs. People were walking around outside with a dazed air. But none of them were as stunned as Sarah, crying in their bedroom. It was only a matter of time now before life as they knew it now would end, and maybe their marriage with it.