Chapter 7 - The Paper Trail
|
At 6:00 PM, Ethan’s long-time corporate attorney, Eleanor Vance, arrived at the estate through the rear service gate, accompanied by a sharp-eyed private investigator named Detective Frank Miller.
They met in the soundproofed basement suite beneath the wine cellar.
Ethan played the video clip from 3:00 PM on the large wall monitor.
When the footage finished, Eleanor leaned back in her chair, her professional composure visibly shaken.
"My God, Ethan," Eleanor whispered. "That threat regarding the toddler... that constitutes felony child endangerment and psychological abuse."
"Is it enough to strip her of all parental rights and throw her out of my house?" Ethan demanded.
"In a family court setting, yes," Frank Miller chimed in, opening a thick manila folder on the table. "But Mr. Caldwell, you need to see what I found when I dug into Claire Dalton's past."
Ethan frowned. "What do you mean?"
Frank pushed three financial spreadsheets across the table.
"Claire didn't marry you because she loved your kids," Frank said bluntly. "Before she met you, she was nearly two million dollars in debt to offshore gambling entities in Macau. Her family’s so-called 'wealth' was an illusion sustained by unpaid loans."
Ethan scanned the documents. "She was broke?"
"Worse," Frank said. "Two months ago, she opened a secondary trust account in the Cayman Islands under a shell company called 'Caldwell Heritage Trust'. She's been slowly forging your signature on minor corporate wire transfers. Small amounts—fifty grand here, a hundred grand there—so your accounting team wouldn't flag it."
Ethan’s eyes narrowed into slits. "She was draining my company."
"And there's more," Frank added, pulling out a printout of an insurance policy. "Three weeks ago, she took out a five-million-dollar supplemental life insurance policy on your daughter, Maddie."
The basement went dead silent.
The sound of the HVAC system hummed overhead, but to Ethan, the world had completely stopped.
May you like
A five-million-dollar policy on a four-year-old child.
"She wasn't just abusing Maddie to control her," Ethan realized, his blood running cold as ice. "She was setting up an accident."
