Chapter 5 - The Audit That Drew BloodBy Wednesday afternoon, Ethan’s world was beginning to fracture at the seams. He had spent the last forty-eight hours trapped in endless emergency meetings with Judith and the firm’s chief legal counsel. He didn't know that I had spent those exact same forty-eight hours sitting in a private conference room with Marcus, the lead forensic auditor from my mother’s district attorney team.
“He was incredibly sloppy, Maya,” Marcus said, tossing a fresh stack of financial summaries onto the table. “He thought because he was the CEO’s son, the compliance officers wouldn't dare look into his offshore wire transfers. We’ve found another two million dollars hidden in a shell company registered under his cousin's name.”
“Is it enough for a federal indictment?” I asked, leaning back in my leather chair, my uninjured right arm resting casually on the mahogany table.
“More than enough,” Marcus smiled, his eyes sharp behind his glasses. “The grand jury is already reviewing the wire fraud charges. But if we drop this bomb now, Judith’s legal team will try to bury it in corporate restructuring. We need to catch him in the act of trying to move the remaining capital out of the country.”
Right on cue, my smartphone buzzed on the table. It was a secure alert from the penthouse’s smart-home security app. Someone was currently inside my private study, trying to force entry into the digital safe where I kept the backup hard drives.
I opened the live video feed on my tablet.
Ethan was on his knees in front of my desk, his gray suit jacket thrown onto the floor, his shirt soaked with sweat as he frantically tried to input different override codes into the electronic lock. Vanessa, his sister, stood behind him, chewing her manicured nails, her face distorted with panic.
“He’s desperate,” I murmured, watching the screen. “He knows the federal prosecutors are circling. He’s trying to find the primary drive to destroy the evidence before morning.”
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“Let him search,” Marcus chuckled, closing his binder. “The safe is empty. The primary drive is sitting right here in my briefcase. He’s just giving us twenty more minutes of federal burglary footage on a silver platter.”
I looked at the screen, watching my husband lose his mind in the very room where he had threatened to break my spirit with a leather belt. The trap was completely set, and he was doing all the digging himself.
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