Chapter 13 - The Judas in the Corner Office
Claire left the prison without saying another word. Sitting in the back of her private car, she dialed Viktor Vance—the estranged older half-brother of Marcus Vance and a renowned private corporate investigator.
"Viktor," Claire said, her voice like ice. "I need you to run a deep forensic audit on someone inside my immediate circle. Every bank account, every phone log, every offshore entity connected to him over the last thirty years."
"Who is the target?" Viktor asked.
"Arthur Pendelton."
For seventy-two hours, Viktor worked in secret, pulling encrypted records from Swiss servers and offshore banking networks. On Friday night, he met Claire at a secluded restaurant outside San Francisco.
He laid out a stack of documents that blew the entire past decade wide open.
"Arthur Pendelton wasn't just your father’s trust attorney, Claire," Viktor revealed softly. "He was Margaret Rowan’s secret lover thirty years ago. He was the one who orchestrated the financial collapse of Richard Rowan’s firm so your father would buy it out!"
Claire’s breath hitched. "Why?"
"Because Arthur wanted access to the Sterling family fortune," Viktor explained. "When your father died fifteen years ago, Arthur realized he couldn't take the money directly because of your father's strict fifty-one percent Class A stock trust. So Arthur manipulated Evan into marrying you, hoping Evan could control you and slowly transfer the stock to Margaret!"
"And when Evan failed?" Claire asked, her knuckles turning white.
"When Evan proved too arrogant and incompetent, Arthur decided to destroy him," Viktor said. "Arthur was the one who leaked the fertility report to you five years ago! He wanted you to divorce Evan and strip him of power so Arthur could step into the vacuum as your sole advisor!"
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Claire closed her eyes as the horrifying truth settled in.
The man who had stood by her side during her divorce, the man who had poured her tea and guided her legal battles, was the architect of every single tragedy in her life.
