Chapter 31 - The Third Player
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"What safety deposit box, Julian?" I demanded, slamming my hand on the metal table, causing the guard by the door to flinch. "Talk!"
Julian swallowed hard, looking around the sterile room as if the walls were listening.
"When I knew the audit was inevitable, I created the altered ledger as an insurance policy," Julian confessed, his voice shaking. "I thought if I could prove you were complicit, the feds would offer me a lighter sentence to testify against the CEO. But the raid happened too fast. I didn't have time to use it."
"So where did you put it?"
"I put the physical drive and the access codes to the offshore accounts in a private safety deposit box at a Swiss bank in Manhattan," Julian admitted, rubbing his face aggressively. "I thought it would be safe until I got out."
"Who else knew about the box?" I pressed, my patience entirely evaporated.
Julian looked at me, a profound, terrifying fear in his eyes.
"Only one other person," he whispered. "The woman who helped me set up the shell companies in the first place. The one who introduced me to the offshore brokers."
My blood ran cold.
"Sabrina," I breathed.
Sabrina Croft. Julian’s former fiancé. The ruthless, social-climbing heiress who had miraculously escaped federal indictment during the embezzlement scandal by aggressively throwing Julian under the bus and claiming total ignorance. She had played the victim perfectly, keeping her pristine reputation intact while Julian took the entire fall.
"She has the access codes," Julian panicked. "She must have emptied the box. Arthur, if Sabrina has the ledger, she isn't just trying to take your company. She wants to destroy the Vance name entirely so she can absorb the market share for her father's firm."
I stood up abruptly, the chair scraping loudly against the concrete floor.
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The game had completely changed. I wasn't fighting my mother’s toxic legacy anymore. I was fighting a predator who had learned how to hunt from the inside of our own empire.
"You created a monster, Julian," I said coldly, looking down at my brother. "And now I have to kill it."
