Chapter 4 - THE POLICE ESCORT AND THE WIFE'S BETRAYAL
The papers fluttered through the air like autumn leaves before landing softly on the plush carpet right at Brandon’s expensive Italian leather shoes.
Brandon didn’t look down at them immediately. His chest was heaving, his face flushed a violent shade of crimson, and his fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. For a second, I thought he might actually lunge across the boardroom table and try to hit me again—right here in front of senior management, right in the heart of the company he thought he owned.
"You're bluffing," Brandon whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of blind rage and sudden, creeping terror. "You're an old, senile man who can't stand that I have a life of my own! You're making things up!"
"Am I?" Richard Vance whispered, his voice breaking as he stared down at the audit reports. He looked up at Brandon with sheer disgust. "Brandon... did you sign off on Fund 404? You told me your father approved it!"
Brandon’s eyes darted wildly around the room. The silence from the board members was deafening. No one rushed to defend him. No one offered a reassuring pat on the shoulder. In the corporate jungle, loyalty only exists as long as power does—and Brandon’s power had just evaporated into thin air.
"I... I needed liquidity!" Brandon stammered, taking a step backward as the reality of what he had done crashed down on him. "The house maintenance! The country club dues! Amber’s boutique investments! You guys pay me peanuts compared to what my dad used to make! I was just borrowing it until the Q3 bonuses dropped!"
"Borrowing corporate funds through an offshore tax evasion shell without board authorization isn't borrowing, son," I said, finally standing up from my chair and buttoning my jacket. "That’s grand larceny. Federal offense. Class 3 felony."
"Dad, please..." Brandon’s arrogance vanished entirely, replaced by a pathetic, sniffling whine. He took two stumbling steps forward and sank to his knees right there on the boardroom floor, right in front of the men he had spent years trying to impress. "Please... don't do this. I'm your only son. Mom would hate this. If you send me to prison, my life is over!"
"Your mother passed away five years ago, Brandon," I said quietly, looking down at him with utter detachment. "And the person who ended your life isn't me. It was you—when you decided that sixty years of hard work, sacrifice, and unconditional love could be repaid with thirty slaps to an old man's face."
Before Brandon could lunge forward to grab my trousers, the heavy double doors of the boardroom swung open once more.
Two men in dark suits, accompanied by a senior police detective I recognized from my old civic committee days, walked calmly into the room.
"Brandon Reeves?" the detective asked, holding up an official arrest warrant.
Brandon froze on his knees, staring up at the gleaming silver handcuffs in the detective's hands. "No... no, wait! There's been a mistake! My father—"
"Your father is the one who filed the financial fraud affidavit and corporate embezzlement charges," the detective interrupted smoothly. "Stand up, put your hands behind your back, and don't make this any harder than it has to be."
As the steel cuffs clicked around my son’s wrists, the glass door of the boardroom creaked open a few inches further.
Amber was standing in the hallway.
She had driven straight from the mansion, her hair a mess, her designer handbag clutched to her chest like a shield. She had expected to find Brandon playing the big executive, ready to fix everything with a wave of his checkbook.
Instead, she watched her husband—the man she had married for status, wealth, and an easy life in River Oaks—being hauled out of a corporate boardroom in handcuffs by the police.
Amber’s eyes locked onto mine. For a fraction of a second, the cruel, smug smile she had worn the night before flickered across her face, desperately searching for a way out. Then, she did something truly remarkable.
She turned around, let out a loud, theatrical gasp, and started walking briskly toward the elevator, desperately trying to distance herself from the wreckage.
"Amber!" Brandon screamed, straining against the detective's grip. "Amber, wait! Tell them! Tell them you knew about the accounts! Tell them we're married!"
Amber didn't even look back. She punched the elevator button furiously, slipped inside the car as the doors slid open, and vanished downward, abandoning her sinking ship without a single backward glance.
Brandon let out a ragged, broken sob, his knees giving out completely as the police officers lifted him up and dragged him toward the exit.
I stood by the window, watching them lead him out to the squad car waiting on the street below.
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"Well, Franklin," Richard Vance muttered nervously, wiping sweat from his forehead. "What... what happens to the firm now?"
"The firm stays right here," I said, turning away from the window and picking up my leather briefcase. "And tomorrow morning, we appoint a new Vice President of Acquisitions. Someone who actually knows how to build something from the ground up."
