Chapter 3 - The Interrogation Room
The interrogation room at the downtown precinct smelled of cheap disinfectant, stale coffee, and quiet desperation.
Through the two-way mirror, I watched Brandon sit slumped in a metal chair, his expensive Brioni suit jacket crumpled, his hair disheveled. The smug, arrogant CEO persona he wore like a second skin had completely evaporated, replaced by a twitchy, paranoid panic. His mother, Margaret, sat in an adjacent holding cell, having a screaming match with a public defender who looked ready to quit his profession on the spot.
The door behind me clicked open, and Detective Miller walked in, tossing a manila folder onto the small table.
"He’s spinning a web of absolute garbage, Olivia," Miller said, shaking his head. "He’s claiming you orchestrated the entire transfer yourself as part of a messy divorce ploy, and that he only broke into your house to 'check on your mental stability' because you threatened self-harm."
A cold, humorless smile touched my lips. "Of course he is. It's the classic abuser's playbook: weaponize mental health when cornered."
"Well, his play isn't working," Miller grinned, pulling out a flash drive. "Especially not after we unlocked his seized phone. Turns out, your ex-husband isn't half as smart as he thinks he is. He left a digital breadcrumb trail a mile wide."
"Show me," I said.
Miller plugged the flash drive into the console, bringing up a series of encrypted chat logs, audio recordings, and banking wire confirmations. "He didn't act alone. He’s been partnering with a corporate raider named Julian Vance—no relation to your partner Marcus, thankfully—who specializes in bleeding tech startups dry through engineered bankruptcies."
My breath caught. Julian Vance. He was a notorious black-market financier who had been barred from Wall Street five years ago for orchestrating hostile takeovers through fraudulent debt loading.
"Julian promised Brandon a ten-million-dollar payout and a clean slate offshore once Sterling Point collapsed under the weight of the missing seventy million," Miller explained, scrolling through the texts. "They planned to blame the loss on a 'sophisticated international cyberattack' originating from Eastern Europe. They even had a fake hacker profile set up to take the blame."
"And the break-in this morning?" I asked.
"Pure panic," Miller said. "When Margaret’s card was declined, Brandon knew the divorce was final and that you were auditing the joint assets. He realized you were about to stumble onto the Cayman transfers before Julian’s team could scrub the servers. He didn't care about the Cartier necklace, Olivia. He cared about his freedom."
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I stood up, adjusting my blazer, my mind racing with absolute clarity. "Can I go in there for five minutes, Detective? Just a brief conversation between former spouses."
Miller hesitated, then smirked, unlocking the door. "Make it quick. And don't touch him—he's already crying enough for the both of us."
