The Trust Account

He stole $340,000. He admits every dollar. But the truth is more dangerous than the crime.

For forty-five years, Wendell Prine has been one of Ohio's most respected attorneys. He's freed the wrongly convicted, defended those who couldn't afford representation, and built a reputation for uncompromising integrity.

Now he's accused of stealing $340,000 from his clients.

Seventy-one withdrawals. Six years. Not a single dollar accounted for.

And Prine isn't denying any of it.

When disciplinary investigator Marin Hale takes the case, she expects a straightforward prosecution. Instead, she finds something that makes no sense. Prine hasn't spent the money on himself. His financial records are meticulously maintained. And rather than fight the charges, he's offering to surrender his law license permanently-without a hearing, without an explanation, and without revealing where the money went.

A guilty man who wants to be punished. A paper trail deliberately left behind. A secret someone has spent twenty years protecting.

As Marin follows the money into a decades-old murder case, she discovers that the truth may destroy more than one man's reputation. Every answer raises another question, and the deeper she investigates, the more she begins to suspect that the institution she serves has secrets of its own.

With a disciplinary deadline approaching and powerful interests determined to keep the past buried, Marin faces an impossible choice: accept the confession and close the case-or risk everything to uncover a truth that could shake the foundations of the legal system.

Because sometimes the greatest injustice isn't the crime itself.

It's what happens when everyone agrees to look the other way.

The Trust Account is a gripping legal mystery filled with buried evidence, moral dilemmas, institutional secrets, and twists that challenge everything readers believe about guilt and innocence.

Book One of the Marin Hale Trilogy. The central mystery reaches its conclusion, but a far-reaching conspiracy is only beginning to emerge.