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The air in the security room grew heavier as Marcus tapped a few keys, bringing up the archive footage from the main hallway and the second-floor landing. On screen, the house was quiet. The morning sunlight streamed through the tall Victorian windows, casting long, geometric shadows across the polished hardwood floors. / Chapter 4 / 8

Chapter 4 - THE WEB OF LIES UNRAVELS

The monitors flickered as Marcus rapidly pulled up a split-screen view of different locations across the sprawling estate.

"If we want to dismantle her completely, we need to look at the financial trail as well as the house cameras," Marcus said, opening a secondary encrypted dashboard on his console. "You noticed how she’s been pushing you to sign those new restructuring documents for the overseas holdings over the last month?"

Mr. Vance narrowed his eyes. "Yes. She claimed it was estate planning advice from her personal legal consultant, a guy named Gregory Vance—no relation, she said."

"Well, I ran a background check on Gregory Vance three days ago when I started getting suspicious," Marcus said, clicking a mouse to bring up a scanned document on the central screen. "He’s not a corporate lawyer. He’s a disgraced financial advisor whose license was revoked in New York five years ago for securities fraud. And get this—according to public records, he’s not her consultant. He’s her ex-husband."

The air in the room seemed to freeze completely.

"Her ex-husband?" Mr. Vance repeated, the words feeling alien in his mouth.

"Divorced on paper three years ago, but public financial filings show they still share several offshore shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands," Marcus explained, scrolling through a dense web of bank transactions. "They’ve been systematically siphoning funds from your private investment portfolios. Every time you signed off on a minor asset transfer for 'charitable renovations,' you were actually feeding their joint overseas accounts."

Mr. Vance stared at the glowing numbers on the screen. Millions of dollars. Not enough to bankrupt him—his empire was too vast for that—but enough to cripple his liquid liquidity if a hostile takeover attempt were to happen. Patricia hadn't just been playing a psychological game with his daughters; she had been running a long-term corporate and domestic heist.

"She played a masterclass," Mr. Vance whispered, a dark, dangerous fascination creeping into his voice. "She made me think she was a trophy wife who cared about social status, while she was acting as a corporate spy inside my own fortress."

"She underestimated one thing, sir," Marcus said softly.

"What's that?"

"She thought you were too busy to ever look at the cameras." Marcus tapped the keyboard once more. "She didn't know that three weeks ago, after Daniela came to me crying about her ruined art supplies—even though she begged me not to tell you—I quietly upgraded every internal camera in this house to high-definition cloud recording with independent local storage. She can't delete a single frame."

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Mr. Vance turned his head slowly to look at his head of security. For the first time in months, a genuine, terrifying smile touched Mr. Vance's lips—not a smile of joy, but the expression of a apex predator realizing the trap had finally closed around its prey.

"Show me what she's doing right now," Mr. Vance commanded.

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