Chapter 7 - THE ARCHITECT OF LIESNathan’s eyes scanned the cramped, frantic handwriting in Claire’s journal, the ink bleeding slightly from water damage.
“Harrison found out about the embezzlement at the firm six months ago. He’s been using the accounts to fund overseas shell companies, and he needed a scapegoat. He told me that if I went to the authorities, he would make sure you took the fall, Nathan. He said you’d spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary for financial crimes you didn't commit.”
Nathan’s breath caught in his throat. He looked up, his mind flashing back to Harrison Vance bursting into his kitchen just weeks ago, demanding signatures, sweating through his expensive suit, desperate to secure control of the accounts.
“The only way out was to disappear,” Claire’s journal continued. “Harrison arranged the staged crash on Hawthorne Ridge using a decoy vehicle and a paid witness. He told me to run, to take a new identity, and never, ever look back, or he would finish what he started and come after you, too. I had to leave you, Nathan. It was the only way to keep you alive.”
The room fell dead silent. The crackling of the fireplace sounded like gunfire in the heavy air.
Nathan rose slowly to his feet, his face turning a terrifying, glacial shade of white. The grief that had paralyzed him for seven years instantly morphed into a cold, blinding rage.
"Harrison," Nathan whispered, the name tasting like ash on his tongue.
"He didn't just steal your company," Maya said quietly, pulling a printed financial ledger from her bag. "Over the last seven years, while you were drowning in grief and shutting yourself away from the world, Vance & Sterling Capital systematically gutted your personal assets. They transferred over four hundred million dollars into offshore accounts controlled entirely by Harrison."
Evie stood up alongside Nathan, her jaw set, her hazel eyes flashing with fury. "So," she said, rolling up her sleeves as if preparing to knead a particularly difficult batch of dough. "The man doesn't just have terrible taste in company. He’s a thief and a murderer."
"He's going to prison," Nathan said, his voice dropping into a lethal, icy calm. He walked over to his mahogany desk, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out a heavy, secure satellite phone.
"Going to prison is too good for him," Evie corrected, walking over to stand beside the desk. "If we just hand him over to the police, his lawyers will tie it up in courts for a decade, and he'll walk on a technicality. We need to back him into a corner where he has nowhere to run."
Nathan looked at the cook—the woman who wore mixing bowls for crowns and refused to let him wallow in self-pity—and for the first time in seven years, a genuine, calculated smile touched his lips.
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"And how do you propose we do that, Evie?" Nathan asked.
Evie grinned, a fierce, wicked expression that suited her far better than a yellow apron. "We invite him to dinner."
