Chapter 11 - The Evidence
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My attorney, Eleanor Price, sat to my immediate right. She opened her sleek leather briefcase and placed three thick, meticulously labeled files directly in front of me on the boardroom table.
“Let’s review the kill shots, Mrs. Vale,” Eleanor said, her pen poised over her legal pad.
I opened the first file. It contained hundreds of pages of forensic accounting. It proved unequivocally that Michael had not just failed as a restaurateur due to a bad economy. He had intentionally diverted over six hundred thousand dollars of Hawthorne's commercial loan funds into hidden, offshore personal accounts. It was textbook embezzlement and federal wire fraud.
I opened the second file. It was filled with high-resolution surveillance photographs and customs invoices. It detailed how Vanessa was illegally importing counterfeit designer goods from overseas shell companies and selling them at a massive markup through her boutique, presenting them to her wealthy clients as authentic.
I finally opened the third file. It held the digital metadata from the refinancing application they had presented to me that morning. Our cybersecurity team had traced the IP address. The electronic records definitively showed that Vanessa had illegally downloaded my signature from an old tax document, digitally altered it, and uploaded the forged version to the bank portal the very night before she crept into my room and cut my hair.
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“The bank’s internal fraud unit is on standby and ready to move,” Eleanor’s expression hardened into a fierce scowl. “So is the county financial crimes investigator. We can have them arrested right this second.”
“Not yet,” I said smoothly, closing the files and stacking them neatly. “I want them to proudly reveal their malicious intent in front of official witnesses. I want them to think they have won, right up until the moment I drop the floor out from under them.”
