Chapter 23 - Drawing the Battle Lines
The moment Juliet left the office to return to her fabricated therapy appointment, our war room was fully assembled. Marcus, Daniel, and I stood around the massive digital whiteboard in the center of the secure conference room. I had already pulled the public tax filings for Kensington Real Estate Holdings, but they were pristine, heavily doctored documents that told us absolutely nothing about Richard's true financial desperation.
"Richard Kensington is a shark," Marcus noted, pacing the length of the room with a cup of black coffee. "He isn't going to make amateur mistakes. He isn't forging signatures on paper checks. He is moving digital assets, real estate equity, and utilizing encrypted offshore servers. If we try to subpoena his records legally right now, his lawyers will tie us up in court for years while he wipes the servers clean."
"Which means we don't go through the front door," I replied, bringing up a map of Richard's corporate network architecture that Daniel had managed to quietly acquire. "If we want to prove he is embezzling Juliet's trust fund, we need a mirror of his private server. We need to see the shadow ledger."
Daniel crossed his arms, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. "I can get us inside his network, but I need physical proximity to his primary router. It’s located in his private office at the Kensington Estate in Lake Forest. The property is heavily guarded. Biometric scanners, armed patrols, the works."
"We don't need to break into the estate," I smiled, a bold, dangerous plan forming in my mind as I looked at the calendar on the screen. "Juliet told us that her parents are hosting their annual charity gala this Saturday at the estate. The house will be filled with hundreds of guests, catering staff, and event planners. The security perimeter will be focused outward, not inward."
"It's a chaotic environment," Marcus caught on, grinning sharply. "Perfect for slipping a Trojan horse into the castle."
"Exactly," I said, turning to the whiteboard and drawing a thick red circle around Saturday's date. "Daniel, you and I are going to attend that gala. We will forge our names onto the guest list. While I distract Richard and Victoria on the ballroom floor, you are going to slip into his study and clone the router. We hit them where they feel the absolute safest."
Daniel nodded, a fierce protective glint in his eye. "They won't even know we were there until it's too late. I'll prep the cloning hardware tonight."
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"This is going to be dangerous, Nora," Marcus warned. "If they catch you in that house, Richard will not hesitate to use violence."
"Let him try," I said coldly, touching the faint scar beside my nose. "I have survived far worse monsters in far grander ballrooms. Richard Kensington is about to learn that he is entirely outmatched."
